Tim McLean > Tim's Quotes

“As the noted author and intellectual W .E. B. Du Bois says, we’ve given all of our economic power away. “When you owe another, your freedom is impaired,” Du Bois counseled. “Your ability to decide your destiny is tainted by the amount you owe.”
― Dennis Kimbro, The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires

“As I preach to my congregation every Sunday when it comes to staying afloat financially and living within your means, there is nothing easy about easy payments. Learn to say the words “I can’t afford it.” —Kirbyjon Caldwell”
― Dennis Kimbro, The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires

“Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming.” —RICHARD BRANSON”
― Chris Guillebeau, The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”
― James Baldwin

“It’s like I’m trying to climb a mountain, but I’ve got one fool trying to shove me down so I won’t be on his level, and another fool tugging at my leg, trying to pull me to the ground he refuses to leave. Jared and Trey are only two people, but after today, I know that when I head to Yale next fall (because I AM going there), I’m gonna be paranoid about people looking at me and wondering if I’m qualified to be there. How do I work against this, Martin? Getting real with you, I feel a little defeated. Knowing there are people who don’t want me to succeed is depressing. Especially coming from two directions. I’m working hard to choose the moral high road like you would, but it’ll take more than that, won’t it? Where’d you get the courage to keep climbing in the face of stuff like this? Because I know you got it from both sides.”
― Nic Stone, Dear Martin

“It’s an unspoken but powerful interaction. If a speaker lets down his guard, so does the audience. If a speaker stays distant and safe, the audience will too.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Being able to extend grace and to forgive people sets us free.”
― Rachel Dolezal, In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World

“I look at every failure as a learning experience and try to spend time with my failures. I stew on them for a while until I pick out some nugget from them that I can take forward.”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“You’re not ready. You’re not ready, because you’re not angry, Baxter. You must reach a point where you’re angry at your old self, your old life, your addictions. You have to hate the way you were, and when this hatred and anger consumes you, then you’ll have the determination not to go back there.”
― John Grisham, The Associate

“The helpful thought for which you look
Is written somewhere in a book.”
― Edward Gorey

“BY MAYA ANGELOU
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Gather Together in My Name Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas The Heart of a Woman All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes A Song Flung Up to Heaven Mom & Me & Mom”
― Maya Angelou, A Song Flung Up to Heaven

“They moved slowly, like fusgeyers, wanderers seeking a home in Europe, or erú West African tribesmen herded off a ship on a Virginia shore to peer back across the Atlantic in the direction of their homeland one last time, moving toward a common destiny, all of them—Isaac, Nate, and the rest—into a future of American nothing.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“The odd group of well-wishers slowly moved down the hallway as Moshe’s sobs cascaded up and down the walls, bouncing from one side to the other. The discourse on Doc Roberts was forgotten now as the group tromped forward, a ragtag assortment of travelers moving fifteen feet as if it were fifteen thousand miles, slow travelers all, arrivals from different lands, making a low trek through a country that claimed to be so high, a country that gave them so much yet demanded so much more. They moved slowly, like fusgeyers, wanderers seeking a home in Europe, or erú West African tribesmen herded off a ship on a Virginia shore to peer back across the Atlantic in the direction of their homeland one last time, moving toward a common destiny, all of them—Isaac, Nate, and the rest—into a future of American nothing. It was a future they couldn’t quite see, where the richness of all they had brought to the great land of promise would one day be zapped into nothing, the glorious tapestry of their history boiled down to a series of ten-second TV commercials, empty holidays, and sports games filled with the patriotic fluff of red, white, and blue, the celebrants cheering the accompanying dazzle without any idea of the horrible struggles and proud pasts of their forebears who had made their lives so easy. The collective history of this sad troupe moving down the hospital corridor would become tiny blots in an American future that would one day scramble their proud histories like eggs, scattering them among the population while feeding mental junk to the populace on devices that would become as common and small as the hot dog that the dying woman thought she smelled; for in death, Chona had smelled not a hot dog but the future, a future in which devices that fit in one’s pocket and went zip, zap, and zilch delivered a danger far more seductive and powerful than any hot dog, a device that children of the future would clamor for and become addicted to, a device that fed them their oppression disguised as free thought.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“Later, years later, Hélène would continue to wonder why she let herself be convinced by this man to stay at his side. But she was not the only one. The trail of those conned by his tender promises would by that time stretch further than Marco Polo’s peregrinations.”
― Thomas Thompson, Serpentine: Charles Sobhraj's Reign of Terror from Europe to South Asia

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“But the wicked have a different head for numbers than most. Any bad they do will end up on the side of never-mind. What’s done to them weighs double.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead