“I would prefer to just continue to speak about truth and to speak about what makes sense.”

I actually don’t think that I’m that much smarter than anybody else. It’s just that I frequently just seem to know what to do, and I think that’s wisdom.

With everything that is complex, we learn. If you don’t learn, then it’s an utter and abject failure. If you do learn, and you’re able to apply that to the next situation, then you take away a measure of success.

Kids have what I call a built-in hypocrisy antenna that comes up and blocks out what you’re saying when you’re being a hypocrite.

You know, many people have said that I’m on the edge and I’m maverick for some of the big operations that I’ve done. I’m not at all. I pray; I ask God to give me wisdom, ‘Should I do it?’, guidance in terms of how to do it, who to consult with. All those kind of things are incredibly important.

My thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman.

It doesn’t matter if you come from the inner city. People who fail in life are people who find lots of excuses. It’s never too late for a person to recognize that they have potential in themselves.

I was perhaps the worst student you have ever seen. You know, I thought I was stupid, all my classmates thought I was stupid, so there was general agreement.

I serve God, and my purpose is to please Him, and if God be for you, who can be against you?

I first wanted to be a psychiatrist. I decided against that in medical school when I discovered that psychiatrists didn’t, in reality, do what they did on TV.

Our children need to see and hear about more black role models in many fields so they can make better choices.

Before this country came on the scene, for thousands of years people did things the same way. Within 200 years of the advent of this nation, men were walking on the moon, and I want us to recognize this is the kind of people that we are. We’re creative with a lot of ingenuity and a lot of energy.

We’re not planning for the future. If we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion, we are going to destroy this nation.

I don’t want my kids to grow up with no father like I did. I came to the conclusion a while ago that you can work until midnight and not be finished or you can work until 6 or 7 and not be finished. I decided I’d rather work until 6 or 7.

The key is to cut out the middleman and empower both doctor and patient with information about what things cost.

Every person is endowed with God-given abilities, and we must cultivate every ounce of talent we have in order to maintain our pinnacle position in the world.

I want the government to provide the military so we don’t get invaded by somebody and destroyed. I want the government to provide the roads so I can get from point A to B. In terms of taking care of my day to day needs, I want to do that myself. I want my community to do that.

We are really here to be happy and to make others happy.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any other poet must he wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of himself.

I make a lot of bogeys and a lot of birdies.

There’s a lot there to enlarge you. That’s part of the value of being in an extended family is that it enlarges you. It makes you bigger. It makes you more.

When I was 20, I used to go around telling stories, and I knew where I was comfortable – onstage, talking, making ’em laugh and listen to the weirdest things. I liked being the center of attention.

A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.