“Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There`s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”

“ALMOST A DECADE HAS passed since this book was first published. As I mention in the original introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest”

“But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.”

“Give yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life, and surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes. ROMANS 6:13 TEV”

“Don't waste your precious time on people who do not appreciate your value. Learn to use your perfume on the pigs when they also learn to bath.”

“Don’t let the horrible nature of the waters prevent you from crossing the rivers of life. The more horrible the challenges we face, the sweeter the joy of conquering them.”

“If our faith isn’t rooted in the Bible, it will wither like a plant pulled out of the soil.”

“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.”

“You are either a player or a spectator! Players influence the game while spectators watch them to do it. Such is life!”

“The time is always right to do what’s right.”

“My hope does not rest in the affairs of this world. It rests in Christ who is coming again.”

“The Christian is not to be disturbed by the chaos, violence, strife, bloodshed, and threat of war that fill the pages of our daily newspapers. We know that these things are the consequences of man’s sin and greed. Every day as I read my newspaper I say: “The Bible is true.

“But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.”

“Keep your mind fixed on what you want in life, not on what you don’t want.”

“It’s not selfish to prioritize your life to fulfill Destiny. It’s actually the most selfless thing you can do. God has an appointment for you to serve humanity in the greatest way possible for you.”