A good retreat is better than a poor fight.

But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, buy you will never imprison my mind.

We don’t choose to be role models; we are chosen. Our only choice is whether to be a good role model or a bad one.

Pain is certain, suffering is optional.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise.

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you’re allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Are you one of the flock that follows, or Are you one that shall lead the way?

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do things, we can accomplish those goals.

I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

You cannot make progress without making decisions.

You and only you are responsible for your life choices and decisions.

I must be a mermaid, I have no fear of depths, and a great fear of shallow living.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

We don't point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations.

The better you are at communicating negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is.

Without properly kept accounts it is impossible to maintain truth in its pristine purity.

Religion is a great force—the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get a man through his own religion and not through yours.

My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of brining this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

True success, true wealth, does not come out of the barrel of a gun.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.