People want to tear me down, they were going to knife me anyway.

We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

Don’t let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don’t whine. You can be brought low, that’s OK, but don’t be reduced by them. Just say, ‚That’s life.‘

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.

We didn’t crumble after 9/11. We didn’t falter after the Boston Marathon. But we’re America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

People in tough times – it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great attitude.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

Mentally, the only players who survive in the pros are the ones able to manage all their responsibilities. Everybody struggles in different ways.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

It’s true my father abused me and didn’t love and protect me the way he should have, and at times it seemed no one would ever help me and it would never end. But God always had a plan for my life, and He has redeemed me.

A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

I went through every emotion with tryna pursue what I’m doing, you know what I mean? And I think what’s gon‘ separate whoever’s gon go for something, that you ain’t gon‘ quit.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you’re dealt?

If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.

I’ve got a woman’s ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

I’ve been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.