“I think segregation is bad, I think it’s wrong, it’s immoral. I’d fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don’t need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write.”

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.

The courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior. The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

When you look at where the real problems are among minorities in our society, particularly blacks, it’s at the bottom. It’s the people who are in school systems that don’t educate, neighborhoods where there is a lot of crime, drugs, the whole bit.

My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.

It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I’m supposed to think.

I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune, because the response, in responding to the misfortune, you develop in your own life, you develop sort of the tools you need to continue on, or to do better.

And I don’t think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there’s another set of moral codes, but I don’t think government has a role.

Any discrimination, like sharp turns in a road, becomes critical because of the tremendous speed at which we are traveling into the high-tech world of a service economy.

Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

The truth of the matter is we have become more interested in designer jeans and break dancing than we are in obligations and responsibilities.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah.

I grew up in a religious environment, and I’m proud of it.

I was smart enough to use pot without getting caught, and now I’m on the Supreme Court. If you were stupid enough to get caught, that’s your problem. Your appeal is denied. This 40 year sentence just might teach you a lesson.

I love being around people who work with their hands, who do the hard things to keep our country going. They’re just my kind of people.

The voices inside of me has lost its breath.

While we breathe, we will hope.

For me writing is like breathing. I could not live without breathing and I could not live without writing.

Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

The secret of life was Breath. That was what I always wanted my words to do, to Breathe.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.

Be the person you wish to become – today. Talk like them, walk like them, breathe like them! Be them now!

We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available.