Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.

Every expression of desired friendship has potential bite. Every smile reveals the teeth.

When you travel the world, you have to watch and you have to listen. We're not going to come in to Ireland without an understanding that there's a history that's very sensitive.

Your enemy is your own self in a different uniform.

Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.

For a long time the only time I felt beautiful-in the sense of being complete as a woman, as a human being, and even female-was when I was singing.

I try to attach myself to things around me so that they don't slip away.

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

Every broken lunatic needed a theme song.

People like you always want back the love they pushed aside. But people like me are gone forever when you say goodbye.