The content of the curriculum should never exclude the realities of the very students who must intellectually wrestle with it. When students study all worlds except their own, they are miseducated.

The ultimate expression of generosity is not in giving of what you have, but in giving of who you are.

Faced with what seems like an impossible task, a group of folks will do well to remember the African proverb: When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.

What you give ought to be in direct relationship to what you've received. If you have been blessed with a great deal, then you have a lot of giving to do.

An education that teaches you to understand something about the world has done only half of the assignment. The other half is to teach you to do something about making the world a better place.

You cannot fully understand your own life without knowing and thinking beyond your life, your own neighborhood, and even your own nation.

While it is true that without a vision the people perish, it is doubly true that without action the people and their vision perish as well.

Show me someone content with mediocrity and I'll show you someone destined for failure.

If folks can learn to be racist, then they can learn to be anti racist. If being sexist ain't genetic, then, dad gum, people can learn about gender equality.

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

the trouble with a woman standing behind her man is that she can't see where she is going!

Our daily prayer ought to be: Please universe, help me help myself and help me show others how to help themselves.

We need music the most when we’re feeling things really intensely. I think the most intense times in your life are when you’re either falling in love or losing it

Circumstances in life often take us places that we never intended to go. We visit some places of beauty, others of pain and desolation.

When young girls are encouraged to explore what they find interesting, they grow up to be interesting women.

There does seem to be some evidence that as people get older, they procrastinate less, perhaps because they feel the pressure of time more.

When a house is tottering to its fall, The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part, One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads, And its own weight soon brings it toppling down.

Do you get the feeling with Sarah Palin, in high school, she was voted least likely to write a book and most likely to burn one?

As children everyone thinks their family is weird and they're upset by the weirdness of their own family.

I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'

Confidence is the most important thing, more important than gold or currency.