No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

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.

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

I wish everyone well, but you need to focus on yourself. You need to stop putting your hand out. Everyone wants hand outs. Everyone wants things for free. You’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to grind. You’ve got go through the struggle, and you’ve got to get it.

Well, I’m working all the time to stay out of trouble!

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

We must begin seeing other creatures as equal. Existence makes us all equal.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

I read poetry to save time.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

I don’t think I’ve met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Homophobia is real in this country.

The one way to get me to work my hardest was to doubt me.

I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

‚Whole Women’s Health‘ made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

You gotta understand: I believe a woman should praise the man, the king. If you holding it down for your woman, I feel like the woman should praise. And the man should praise the queen.

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.