There was a time when all dark-skinned people were called Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa as, 'The Land Of The Burnt-Face People.'

Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.

White people think when you love yourself you hate them. No, when I love myself they become irrelevant to me.

What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.

If we are going to be masters of our destiny, we must be masters of the ideas that influence that destiny.

Most human behavior is controlled by images. Image is a factor in how people look at themselves and what they use to reflect themselves. The control of images is a major factor in world power.

To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful.

It's time for Black people to stop playing the separating game of geography, of where the slave ship put us down. We must concentrate on where the slave ship picked us up.

We will have taken one giant step forward when we face this reality: Powerful people never teach powerless people how to take their power away from them.

Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world.

Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil.

A weed is but an unloved flower.

Poetry seems especially like nothing else so much as itself. Poetry is not like, it is the very lining of the inner life.

Doubts in your mind are a much greater roadblock to success than obstacles on the journey.

Bravery is the stupidity of heart.

The unfortunate thing about working for yourself is that you have the worst boss in the world. I work every day of the year except at Christmas, when I work a half day.

I feel like I'm wearing orthopedic shoes, because I stand corrected.

The problem is efforts by liberals to establish a wall between religion and society, in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.

Nike told me, 'We can't give you royalties because you're not a professional athlete.' I told them 'I'll go to the Garden and play one-on-no-one.' I'm a performance athlete!

There were decades I didn't play sober. I thought, Who would want to? But at some point, I decided that if it was important enough to me to keep doing it as art, I should do it with all my tools.

There's a kind of virgin one only becomes with difficulty.