Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.
When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle Willingly burning my self To light up the darkness around me.
I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that's my religion.
I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.
She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it.
This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.
War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.
We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that's going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.
Curiosity is my natural state and has led me headlong into every worthwhile experience (never mind the others) I have ever had.
I gave my archive to Emory University because there's a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he's the editor.
No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people.
No song or poem will bear my mother's name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother's stories.
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.
Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.
You know a little drink now and then never hurt nobody, but when you can't git started without asking the bottle, you in trouble.
Critics don't really affect the fact that we live in this paradise and what the meaning of that [is]. And what luck to have this!
Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it's a good place that we're all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.
I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don't think it's intelligent, and it's not sane. So why would you want to support it?
My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that.
People who work hard often work too hard. ... May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta, the nap and the pause in all its forms.
She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show.
Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don't do that, we really deserve the world we get.
How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, and hopefully embraced upon arrival, impacts the whole of our time on earth.
People will say to you, "Oh, you are fearless." That is so not true. We should stop saying that about people. It's a slander, really.
Artists are messengers whose responsibility is to unite the world -- a faith that will lead not to destruction but to transformation.
I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.
For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.
The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.
Eventually I knew what hair wanted; it wanted to be itself ... to be left alone by anyone, including me, who did not love it as it was.
You a low down dog is what’s wrong. It’s time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.
I feel that the ancestors are that covering that will cover me. I feel like I can only be enveloped in them spiritually and physically.
I have a lot of faith in us. I have a lot of faith in humanity. It's based, though, on my own life; I've come too far to be a pessimist.
For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.
It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.
When people become elders - when they're older; they can be old without being an elder, really. They [can] just be old and not very useful.
Even now, I find that no matter what has happened, I still have that trust. I have a lot of trust, that people can be better than they are.
'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.
The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.
Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm.
I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.
It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it.
I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.
Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. Saki Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.
Always with me was the inner twin: my true nature, my true self. It is timeless, free, compassionate and in love with whatever is natural to me
Honestly, that is the most important thing to me: Can I continue to live up to my own expectations of myself - and not fall back into slacking?
Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.
How anyone cannot see that Nature is God is amazing to me: that they'd rather worship something that can only exist, really, in their own minds.
As an elder of the Americas and of the rest of the planet, it is my responsibility to care for and protect, to the best of my ability, the young.
I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.
Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.