I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

For me, there is no such thing as a negative experience.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

Prospering just doesn’t have to do with money.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Traveling around the world and preaching for over 70 years did not give much time for reflection.

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand Points of Light. This is my mission, and I will complete it.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

I do have motivation. A lot of motivation.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

I grew up in a funny way.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

The people in my songs are all me.

If you deserve it, go get it.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.