“I urge you to pursue preserving your personal history to allow your children and grandchildren to know who you were as a child and what your hopes and dreams were.”

“Don’t take your Bible for granted! For centuries ordinary believers had no access to the Bible; Bibles had to be painstakingly copied by hand and were very expensive. The only access most people had to the Bible was by hearing it read in church. The invention of the printing press changed all that, however, and today the Bible is readily available in multiple translations and hundreds of languages around the world.”

“[T]he gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape.”

“...if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”

“I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.”

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

“Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared.”

“It's not what you know but the kind of job you do that makes the difference.”

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

“The terrain enforced its own rhythms.”

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

“We all have choices in the way we react to the words we hear. Our lives and the lives of all those around us will be significantly improved if we choose to react positively rather than negatively.”

“If you don't know what you want, others will want you for what they know! You must know yourself!”

“Still, I strongly resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book, a past that left me feeling exposed, even slightly ashamed.”