The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.

I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life

There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost, go back to the last place where you knew who you were, and what you were doing, and start from there.

If every moment is sacred and if you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.

If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it's probably not broad enough a coalition.

Mothering/nurturing is a vital force and process establishing relationships throughout the universe.

The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail... and I'd never heard it before in my life.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

I have never yet met a healthy person who worries very much about his health or a really good person who worries much about his own soul.

Sometimes writing songs is like waiting for deliveries.

Oh, and I heard a rumor that I died in a car accident. I didn’t.

The repetition of the holy names reveals a presence hidden within the heart. Something begins to happen that's very disturbing - we get happy.

On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

The great person never loses a childlike spirit.

There are no victims, only volunteers.

It was the only way to progress, to stop.

Show yourself a Christian by suffering without murmuring. In patience possess your soul - they lose nothing who gain Christ.

Not everyone coming to you with a problem wants a solution. They are attached to the attention it brings them.