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

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.

Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn't have religion

Let the blood and the bruises define your legacy.

Everything you do to improve your physical well-being will have a positive impact on how good you feel about yourself.

The master of any craft is first a master of self, cooperating with innate intelligence within.

The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.

Don't let other people's conversations about what you're doing or you've done be part of your own conversation.

The spectacle of a field of battle after the combat, is sufficient to inspire Princes with the love of peace, and the horror of war.

There is no substitute for character. You can buy brains but you cannot buy character.

What does this patch-sewing mean you ask? Eating and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn. You patch it with food and other ego-satisfactions.

The finest people, as people go, cannot help but betray a fair portion of fear and insecurity, even full-blown panic.