“Start where you are with what you have, knowing that what you have is plenty enough.”

Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you’ve over come

We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.

The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.

Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.

If you truly want to measure the success of a man, you do not measure it by a position he has achieved, but by the obstacles he has overcome.

My whole life has largely been one of surprises.

We shall prosper as we learn to do the common things of life in an uncommon way. Let down your buckets where you are.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.

It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.

Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems that political independence disappears without economic independence that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.

Ignorance is more costly to any State than education.

Basically, I started singing when I started talking. Music has just been my saving grace my whole life.

Poverty’s child – he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.

I started writing poetry when I was six. I had this teacher who didn’t believe the poems I’d bring in were mine because they were dark and sad. But I wrote about what I experienced in my childhood.

I didn’t start out as a writer. I became one through my habits.

I remember when I first started being in magazines, I had pretty thin skin. I was this nerd that read books and stayed home and didn’t go out.

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

So many of us start along the spiritual path because we are suffering. But you must realize that for real healing to occur, there must first be deep compassion for yourself, especially the parts of yourself you dislike or consider ugly.

Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.