His Quotes

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

Each one prays to God according to his own light.

A runner must run with dreams in his heart, not money in his pocket.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head; it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way.

Every time there's a revolution, it comes from somebody reading a book about revolution. David Walker wrote a book and Nat Turner did his thing.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild.

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it's like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.

When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.

There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

Negroes' problem is that they do not have their egos. That's why our churches end up having a white service, because our preacher is not arrogant enough to take God's word, so he have to go and get some white fellow's agenda and put it in his church.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.

For God so loved the World that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential - the imagination.

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.