I’m not a centerfold.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.

I am sure there’s going to be times when I do things wrong that no one’s going to like and everyone’s going to think I’m terrible and rubbish but I know I’m going to go through those times, and it’s just about understanding that that’s going to happen.

Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it’s not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don’t want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it’s not unhealthy, so I’m going to rock with it.

I’m not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself – then they get to say ‚See, you did it yourself.‘

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Ever since I dated a woman, I know what it is to grab a curve on a woman’s body. Skinny’s not fine when the lights are low.

Don’t be humble… you’re not that great.

Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn’t matter if you have a beautiful face or not.

I’ve always kinda been a little outcast myself, a little oddball, doin‘ my thing, my own way. And it’s been hard for me to, to be accepted, certainly in the early years of my life.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

I was willing to accept what I couldn’t change.

I was raised to be independent.

Most of us are raised to believe we are ordinary. The anchor of the universe is present in every child. A parent only needs to guide and step aside and let them fulfill their dharma. Help children remember that they can do or be anything.

I’m much more comfortable and confident running out on the field in front of 70,000 people instead of standing in front of a camera trying to say some lines. The people who do that as a profession are very talented because it’s certainly not easy.

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

We have an epidemic of insecure people in our society today.

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair.

I wasn’t a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.

Being seventy is not a sin.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

Freedom lies in being bold.

I would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered. I feed my daughter almost exclusively organic food.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

In the public eye, girls and women with strong perspectives are hated. If you’re a girl with an opinion, people just hate you. There are still people who are afraid of successful women, and that’s so lame.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

You know, when Michael Jackson does the moonwalk, he’s showing off! When Prince or Hendrix do a guitar solo, it’s confidence! I would hate to be at a show and some nervous wreck is sweating up there and doesn’t feel like he deserves to be there.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

Clothing & fashion are kind of my security blanket, almost.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.