The importance of education plays a huge role.

My mother is extraordinary; she's a superwoman, like so many other single mothers who are out there.

We're not products of our environments, we're products of our expectations.

The young men in our city are not problems to be solved. They are opportunities to be unleashed.

When it is time for you to leave this school, leave your job, or even leave this earth, you make sure you have worked hard to make sure it mattered you were even here.

Potential is universal, opportunity is not.

Life's impermanence, I realized, is what makes every single day so precious. It's what shapes our time here. It's what makes it so important than not a single moment be wasted.

The expectations that others place on us help us form our expectations of ourselves.

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.

But really, where leadership is born and where leadership is really bred is.

The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

A big part of my life is music education because it changed my life - but arts, academics and athletics should all be equally treated in the school.

Any penalty - I've told you a hundred times - can be eliminated by concentration or good judgment.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.

We're constantly changing and any practice meant to serve our authenticity should reflect our fluid nature.

I went through some real challenges growing up. I joined the Army two weeks out of high school when I was 17, and never looked back.

When you prepare a list of improvements and you make them small and achievable, you won't just stick to then, you'll increase the chances that you'll keep moving forward.

I love the idea that if you build something with enough depth and texture, you can watch it again and again and see new things every time, and that's very important.

Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.

I work and work and if I have a surplus I book a holiday.