resilience Quotes

Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

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.

A black person grows up in this country - and in many places - knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.