My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

You can’t put your feet on the ground until you’ve touched the sky.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

I’m not a regrets-type person.

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

What nourishes me also destroys me.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Peace is one of the most precious gifts God has promised His children. I know, because for many years my life was not peaceful, and I was miserable.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don’t be discouraged… just be willing to change.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

I feel like people can relate to me because we all go through wins and roadblocks and passion and pain, and it’s a vibe.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

I grew up in a funny way.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they’ve taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.