"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

"The implication of this is that the mind’s possibilities are limited by its concept of its potential."
— Na'im Akbar (Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery)

"When young Black boys learn that there are no limits to our possibilities on the basketball courts, we create the athletic genius of Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson and in their genius, they recreate the game of basketball. When our young people know that there are no limits to their potential in the world of manufacturing, communication, physics, chemistry or the science of the human mind, then those same young Black minds who create dances on the dance floor or compose music on their bodies with the ‘hand jive’ will recreate these fields of human endeavor with the same incomparability."
— Na'im Akbar (Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery)

"Human beings are unable to be about the serious business of living and building societies if they feel compelled to always clown or entertain others. People do not take you seriously if you don't take yourself seriously. A sense of humor brings necessary balance to an organized life, but a life of humor blinds one to life."
— Na'im Akbar (Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery)

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing."
— Abraham Lincoln

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
— Winston S. Churchill

"People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner."
— Andrew Grove

"The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man."
— Huey P. Newton

"If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid."
— Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)

"Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think."
— Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)

"I made this resolution today. I will try to excel in all things yet if I am excelled, without fault of mine, I will not be mortified. I will not withhold from any one the praise which I think his due; nor will I allow myself to envy another's praise or to feel jealousy when I hear him praised. May God help me to keep it."
— Salmon P. Chase

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
— Calvin Coolidge

"When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
— William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

"Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life's artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist."
— Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)

"Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you."
— William Arthur Ward

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
— William A. Ward

"I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down."
— Abraham Lincoln

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
— Bessie Anderson Stanley

"Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "Your father’s right," she said. "Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come. "
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)

"If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto. "
— Carter G. Woodson

"It may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood--to hate himself."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"Et tu, Brute?"
— William Shakespeare

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self Reliance)

"No man knows what he can do until he tries."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong."
— Carter G. Woodson (The Mis-Education of the Negro)

"The man who dies rich, dies disgraced."
— Andrew Carnegie

"The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"We cannot afford to lose the Negro. We have urgent need of all and more. Let us therefore turn our efforts to making the best of him. "
— Andrew Carnegie

"Be careful of the books you read,
as of the company you keep,
for your habits and character will be
as much influenced by the former
as the latter."
— Paxton Hood

"The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that."
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley)

"For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent."
— W.E.B DuBois

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"
Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it no themselves; and, under a just God cannot long retain it."
— Abraham Lincoln

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me insufficient for that day."
— Abraham Lincoln

"You know, you don't have to have money to be a successful businessperson. You don't need a college degree. You just need a lot of common sense backed up by a willingness to work hard."
— Farrah Gray (Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out)

"The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis."
— Cornel West (Race Matters)