“Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.”

You remember the past not so that it is “accurately recorded,” to say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.

Aristotle defined virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life.

But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well.

It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world – a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one – is to fix yourself.

Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.

People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves.

Always place your becoming above your current being.

Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe, or strong?

Dare, instead, to be dangerous. Dare to be truthful. Dare to articulate yourself, and express (or at least become aware of) what would really justify your life.

If society is corrupt, but not the individuals within it, then where did the corruption originate? How is it propagated? It’s a one-sided, deeply ideological theory.

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

If you fulfill your obligations every day you don’t need to worry about the future.

If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.

Begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.

We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate.

Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage.

Music is the universal language no matter the country we are born in or the color of our skin. Bring us all together.

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.

You deserve to be a happy person you were born to be.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

The day I was born songs were on records, phones were tied down, computers needed rooms and the web was fiction. Change the world. You can.

I want every young man who sees me to know that I’m not that different from them. I wasn’t born into wealth. I wasn’t born into fame. I made a lot of mistakes – but I kept at it.

You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.