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Joy Is A Freedom. It Helps A Person To Find His/her Own Liberation. The Person Who Is Joyous Takes Responsibility For The Time He/she Takes Up And The Space That He/she Occupies. You Share It! Some Of You Have It ... You Share It! That Is What Joy Is! When You Continue To Give It Away You Will Still Have So Much More Of It.

-Maya Angelou

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Joy Is A Freedom.

Maya Angelou

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Joy Is A Freedom. It Helps A Person To Find His/her Own Liberation. The Person Who Is Joyous Takes Responsibility For The Time He/she Takes Up And The Space That He/she Occupies. You Share It! Some Of You Have It ... You Share It! That Is What Joy Is! When You Continue To Give It Away You Will Still Have So Much More Of It.

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Falling In Love

Love Recognizes No Barriers. It Jumps Hurdles, Leaps Fences, Penetrates Walls To Arrive At Its Destination Full Of Hope.

At 50, I Began To Know Who I Was. It Was Like Waking Up To Myself.

If The Door Has Been Opened And I've Been Invited, Or If I'm Not Invited And I Somehow Know I'm Supposed To Go In There, I Put Myself Together And Go In, Praying All The While. I Try To Learn Something Before I Go In. I Try To Show Some Respect Of The Place I'm Going Into.

You Can Never Be Great At Anything Unless You Love It.

Intelligence Is A Separate Gift, For The Benefit Of Students, So That They May Think Of Themselves As Intellectual And Not Very Intelligent, Or Intelligent And Not Very Intellectual. One Hopes, Of Course, That They Try To Bring The Two Virtues, The Two Elements, Into Their Lives At The Same Time.

I Couldn't Tell Fact From Fiction, Or If The Dream Was True My Only Sure Prediction In This World Was You. I'd Touch Your Features Inchly. Beard Love And Dared The Cost, The Sented Spiel Reeled Me Unreal And I Found My Senses Lost.

He Thrived With Passion And Compassion, Humor And Style. We Had Him Whether We Know Who He Was Or Did Not Know, He Was Ours And We Were His.

Some Of Us Are Timid. We Think We Have Something To Lose So We Don't Try For That Next Hill.

For Africa To Me... Is More Than A Glamorous Fact. It Is A Historical Truth. No Man Can Know Where He Is Going Unless He Knows Exactly Where He Has Been And Exactly How He Arrived At His Present Place.

He Was A Simple Man Who Had No Inferiority Complex About His Lack Of Education, And Even More Amazing No Superiority Complex Because He Had Succeeded Despite That Lack.

When We Cast Our Bread Upon The Waters We Can Presume That Someone Downstream Whose Face We Will Never Know Will Benefit From Our Action, As We Who Are Downstream From Another Will Profit From The Grantor's Gift.

I Walk Into A Room Just As Cool As You Please, And To A Man, The Fellows Stand Or Fall Down On Their Knees.

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Poetry Puts Starch In Your Backbone So You Can Stand, So You Can Compose Your Life.

The Writer Has To Take The Most Used, Most Familiar Objects - Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Adverbs - Ball Them Together And Make Them Bounce, Turn Them A Certain Way And Make People Get Into A Romantic Mood; And Another Way, Into A Bellicose Mood. I'm Most Happy To Be A Writer.

Yet It Is Only Love Which Sets Us Free.

That Knowledge Humbles Me, Melts My Bones, Closes My Ears, And Makes My Teeth Rock Loosely In Their Gums. And It Also Liberates Me. I Am A Big Bird Winging Over High Mountains, Down Into Serene Valleys. I Am Ripples Of Waves On Silver Seas. I'm A Spring Leaf Trembling In Anticipation.

Lord Keep Your Arm Around My Shoulder And Your Hand Over My Mouth.

I Sustain Myself With The Love Of Family.

What Is A Fear Of Living? It's Being Preeminently Afraid Of Dying. It Is Not Doing What You Came Here To Do, Out Of Timidity And Spinelessness. The Antidote Is To Take Full Responsibility For Yourself - For The Time You Take Up And The Space You Occupy. If You Don't Know What You're Here To Do, Then Just Do Some Good.

There Is No Place Where God Is Not.

Hold Those Things That Tell Your History And Protect Them. During Slavery, Who Was Able To Read Or Write Or Keep Anything? The Ability To Have Somebody To Tell Your Story To Is So Important. It Says: 'i Was Here. I May Be Sold Tomorrow. But You Know I Was Here.'

The Most Difficult Thing In The World, It Seems To Me, Is To Realize That I Am A Child Of God; To Keep That In My Mind All The Time.

Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now.

Inspirational Life

The Problem I Have With Haters Is That They See My Glory, But They Don't Know My Story.

I Never Expected Anyone To Take Care Of Me, But In My Wildest Dreams And Juvenile Yearnings, I Wanted The House With The Picket Fence From June Allyson Movies. I Knew That Was Yearning Like One Yearns To Fly.

Every Person Needs To Take One Day Away. A Day In Which One Consciously Separates The Past From The Future.

I Wish That We Could Look Into Each Other's Faces, In Each Other's Eyes, And See Our Own Selves. I Hope That The Children Have Not Been So Scarred By Their Upbringing That They Only Think Fear When They See Someone Else Who Looks Separate From Them.

The Best Comfort Food Will Always Be Greens, Cornbread, And Fried Chicken.

I've Had Rainbows In My Clouds.

The Real Difficulty Is To Overcome How You Think About Yourself. If We Don't Have That We Never Grow, We Never Learn, And Sure As Hell We Should Never Teach.

The Only Way You Can Be A Mark Is If You Want Something For Nothing. If You're Greedy, You're Set Up.

At Fifteen Life Had Taught Me Undeniably That Surrender, In Its Place, Was As Honorable As Resistance, Especially If One Had No Choice.

You Dwell In Whitened Castles With Deep And Poisoned Moats And Cannot Hear The Curses Which Fill Your Children's Throats.

Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size.

One Must Know Not Just How To Accept A Gift, But With What Grace To Share It.

I Am Serious, So I Laugh A Lot. You Need To Laugh. You Don't Laugh Enough. I Don't Trust Anyone Who Doesn't Laugh.

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One Isn't Born With Courage. One Develops It By Doing Small Courageous Things.

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Flesh And Blood

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Everybody Is Worth Everything.

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The End Of The Day

I Pray For Humility Because That Comes From Inside Out. And What Humility Does For One, Is It Reminds Us That There Are People Before Me. I Have Already Been Paid For. And What I Need To Do Is Prepare Myself So That I Can Pay For Someone Else Who Has Yet To Come, But Who May Be Here And Needs Me.

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Inspirational Friendship

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I Believe That People Want The Scent Of Love, More Than Anything Else. And I Don't Mean Sentimentality, I Don't Mean Mush. I Mean That Idea, That Human Beings Are More Alike Than We Are Different. And That Means That I Can Love You. I Don't Mean Support You In Bad Things You Do, That I Can Understand Because You're A Human Being.

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It Is Impossible To Struggle For Civil Rights, Equal Rights For Blacks, Without Including Whites. Because Equal Rights, Fair Play, Justice, Are All Like The Air: We All Have It, Or None Of Us Has It. That Is The Truth Of It.

I Think We All Have Empathy. We May Not Have Enough Courage To Display It.

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If We All Hold On To The Mistake, We Can't See Our Own Glory In The Mirror Because We Have The Mistake Between Our Faces And The Mirror; We Can't See What We're Capable Of Being. You Can Ask Forgiveness Of Others, But In The End The Real Forgiveness Is In One's Own Self.

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I Walk Into A Room Just As Cool As You Please, And To A Man, The Fellows Stand Or Fall Down On Their Knees.

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Don't Let The Man Bring You Down.

I Was Raped When I Was Very Young. I Told My Brother The Name Of The Person Who Had Done It. Within A Few Days The Man Was Killed. In My Child's Mind--seven And A Half Years Old--i Thought My Voice Had Killed Him. So I Stopped Talking For Five Years.

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Without Courage You Cannot Practice Any Of The Other Virtues.

It May In Fact Be Utterly Impossible To Be Successful Without Helping Others To Become Successful.

I Make Writing As Much A Part Of My Life As I Do Eating Or Listening To Music.

The Only Way You Can Be A Mark Is If You Want Something For Nothing. If You're Greedy, You're Set Up.

Even Here In America, We Felt The Cool, Refreshing Breeze Of Freedom When Nelson Mandela Took The Seat Of Presidency In His Country Where Formerly He Was Not Even Allowed To Vote. We Were Enlarged By Tears Of Pride As We Saw Nelson Mandela's Former Prison Guards Invited, Courteously, By Him To Watch From The Front Rows His Inauguration.

Creativity Or Talent, Like Electricity, Is Something I Don't Understand But Something I'm Able To Harness And Use.

As A Nurse, We Have The Opportunity To Heal The Heart, Mind, Soul And Body Of Our Patients, Their Families And Ourselves. They May Not Remember Your Name But They Will Never Forget The Way You Made Them Feel.

'god Put The Rainbow In The Clouds, Not Just In The Sky'... It Is Wise To Realize We Already Have Rainbows In Our Clouds, Or We Wouldn't Be Here. If The Rainbow Is In The Clouds, Then In The Worst Of Time, There Is The Possibility Of Seeing Hope... We Can Say 'i Can Be A Rainbow In The Cloud For Someone Yet To Be.' That May Be Our Calling.

If We Lose Love And Self Respect For Each Other, This Is How We Finally Die.

I Long, As Does Every Human Being, To Be At Home Wherever I Find Myself.

Laugh As Much As You Can.

It’s The Fire In My Eyes, And The Flash Of My Teeth, The Swing In My Waist, And The Joy In My Feet. I’m A Woman Phenomenally.

Putting Down On Paper What You Have To Say Is An Important Part Of Writing, But The Words And Ideas Have To Be Shaped And Cleaned, Cleaned As Severely As A Dog Cleans A Bone, Cleaned Until There's Not A Shred Of Anything Superfluous.

I Love To See A Young Girl Go Out And Grab The World By The Lapels.

A Societies Needs Determines Their Ethics

Growing Up At My Grandmother's Table, She Always Had Rice. She Might Do Something As Exotic As Potatoes Or Spaghetti, But There Was Still Always Rice, Just In Case You Needed A Little Rice Fix.

Continue To Be Bold, Courageous. Try To Choose The Wisest Thing And Once You've Chosen The Wisest Thing Go Out And Try To Achieve It. Be It.

Creativity Or Talent, Like Electricity, Is Something I Don’t Understand But Something I’m Able To Harness And Use. While Electricity Remains A Mystery, I Know I Can Plug Into It And Light Up A Cathedral Or A Synagogue Or An Operating Room And Use It To Help Save A Life. Or I Can Use It To Electrocute Someone. Like Electricity, Creativity Makes No Judgment. I Can Use It Productively Or Destructively. The Important Thing Is To Use It. You Can’t Use Up Creativity. The More You Use It, The More You Have.

You May Encounter Many Defeats, But You Must Not Be Defeated. In Fact, The Encountering May Be The Very Experience Which Creates The Vitality And The Power To Endure.

It's Wonderful That Whenever Patsy Cline's Name Is Mentioned, People's Voices Fall And They Become Right Sentimental. And, Rightly So.

If I Have A Monument In This World, It Is My Son.

We Need To Remember That We Are All Created Creative And Can Invent New Scenarios As Frequently As They Are Needed.

I Certainly Do Not Adore The Writer's Discipline. I Have Lost Lovers, Endangered Friendships, And Blundered Into Eccentricity, Impelled By A Concentration Which Usually Is To Be Found Only In The Minds Of People About To Be Executed In The Next Half Hour.

Indeed We Have Souls. And If A Person Is Religious, I Think It's Good, It Helps You A Bit. But If You're Not, At Least You Can Have The Sense That There Is A Condition Inside You Which Looks At The Stars With Amazement And Awe. That Listens To Water With A River Flowing, Or Water Falling In Rain And Is Lifted Up By That And Listens To A Wonderful Singer, Wonderful Musicians, Listens To Maybe Duke Ellington Or Frank Sinatra Or Listens To Odetta And Mary J. Blige. Yes, And Thinks Whoo! And Thinks, Yes, Hmm, All Right Now. My Soul Has Been Washed. I Feel Better, I Feel Stronger.

Let The Brain Go To Work, Let It Meet The Heart And You Will Be Able To Forgive.

If You Were The President Of The United States Or The Queen Of England - You Couldn't Have A Person Who Would Be More Protective Than My Mother Was For Me. Which Meant Really That I Could Dare To Do All Sorts Of Things.

A Woman Needs Someone She Can Trust, Someone Who Laughs When She Laughs, But Who Has Different Ideas So She Can Learn From And Teach To Them. She Needs Someone Who Will Stand Up With Her And Encourage Her To Be A Woman-not Just A Female. See Where You Are, Admit What You Know, And What You Need, And Search For A Sister Friend.

The Caged Bird Sings With A Fearful Trill, Of Things Unknown, But Longed For Still, And His Tune Is Heard On The Distant Hill, For The Caged Bird Sings Of Freedom.

[librarians] Study Their Field With As Much Determination And As Much Delight As Open-heart Surgeons.

Bitterness Is Like Cancer. It Eats Upon The Host. But Anger Is Like Fire. It Burns It All Clean.

For Africa To Me... Is More Than A Glamorous Fact. It Is A Historical Truth. No Man Can Know Where He Is Going Unless He Knows Exactly Where He Has Been And Exactly How He Arrived At His Present Place.

Each Of Us Has The Right And The Responsibility To Assess The Roads Which Lie Ahead, And Those Over Which We Have Traveled, And If The Future Road Looms Ominous Or Unpromising, And The Roads Back Uninviting, Then We Need To Gather Our Resolve And, Carrying Only The Necessary Baggage, Step Off That Road Into Another Direction. If The New Choice Is Also Unpalatable, Without Embarrassment, We Must Be Ready To Change That As Well.

Life Sometimes Gives You A Second Chance.

Every Person Needs To Take One Day Away. A Day In Which One Consciously Separates The Past From The Future. Jobs, Family, Employers, And Friends Can Exist One Day Without Any One Of Us, And If Our Egos Permit Us To Confess, They Could Exist Eternally In Our Absence. Each Person Deserves A Day Away In Which No Problems Are Confronted, No Solutions Searched For. Each Of Us Needs To Withdraw From The Cares Which Will Not Withdraw From Us.

You Think You May Not Be Heard. Speak Anyway.

Food Served Is Always More Than Just Food Served. That Is To Say, It Is More Than Just Fuel For The Body. Depending Upon Who Has Prepared The Food And Who Has Served It And With What Spirit, It Can Uplift The - And Around The World, In Every Culture, Food Is Used To Flirt, To Be Coy, A Raise In The Employment Or To Search For Employment. It Can Bring Warring Factions Together.

Living Well Is An Art That Can Be Developed: A Love Of Life And Ability To Take Great Pleasure From Small Offerings And Assurance That The World Owes You Nothing And That Every Gift Is Exactly That, A Gift.

I Think A Number Of The Leaders Are, Whether You Like It Or Not, In The Hip-hop Generation. And When They Understand Enough, They'll Do Wonders. I Count On Them.

It's True. I Can Do Anything And Do It Well Because God Loves Me. It Still Humbles Me.

I Love A Hebrew National Hot Dog With An Ice-cold Corona - No Lime. If The Phone Rings, I Won't Answer Until I'm Done.

The First Thing I Do In The Morning When I Awaken Is Say, 'thank You, Lord!' I'm Grateful To Be Alive, And I'm Going To Try To Tell The Truth As Well As I Know And Tell It As Eloquently As I Can So That People Can Hear It.

Make Every Effort To Change Things You Do Not Like. If You Cannot Make A Change, Change The Way You Have Been Thinking. You Might Find A New Solution.

My Mission In Life Is Not Merely To Survive, But To Thrive

Will To Survive

I’ve Got A Magic Charm That I Keep Up My Sleeve, I Can Walk The Ocean Floor And Never Have To Breathe.

My People Couldn't Have Survived Slavery Without Having Hope That It Would Get Better. And There's Some Songs From The 19th And 18th Century That Say [sings], "by And By, By And By, I Will Lay Down, This Heavy Load." And I Mean, So Many Songs That Spoke Of Hope And Understand It Better By And By. Amazing Songs. So That The Slaves, Just Knowing That He, She, Did Not Have The Right Legally To Walk Within One Inch Away From Where The Slave Owner Dictated, And Yet The Same Person, Wrote And Sang With Fervor, "if The Lord Wants Somebody, Here Am I, Send Me." It's Amazing.

My People Couldn't Have Survived Slavery Without Having Hope That It Would Get Better. And There's Some Songs From The 19th And 18th Century That Say [sings], "by And By, By And By, I Will Lay Down, This Heavy Load." And I Mean, So Many Songs That Spoke Of Hope And Understand It Better By And By. Amazing Songs. So That The Slaves, Just Knowing That He, She, Did Not Have The Right Legally To Walk Within One Inch Away From Where The Slave Owner Dictated, And Yet The Same Person, Wrote And Sang With Fervor, "if The Lord Wants Somebody, Here Am I, Send Me." It's Amazing.

You Want Me To Do Something... Tell Me I Can't Do It.

Motivational Workout

It Is A No-fail, Incontrovertible Reality: If You Get, Give. If You Learn, Teach. You Can't Do Anything With That Except Do It.

If Growing Up Is Painful For The Southern Black Girl, Being Aware Of Her Displacement Is The Rust On The Razor That Threatens The Throat. It Is An Unnecessary Insult.

A Great Soul Serves Everyone All The Time. A Great Soul Never Dies. It Brings Us Together Again And Again.

Everybody Born Comes From The Creator Trailing Wisps Of Glory. We Come From The Creator With Creativity. I Think That Each One Of Us Is Born With Creativity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Once Said That Easy Reading Is Damn Hard Writing.

Glory Falls Around Us As We Sob A Dirge Of Desolation On The Cross

There Is A Lot Of Ignorance, And I Don't Mean Intellectual Ignorance. I Mean People Think That If You Get Something, It Will Take Away From What I Have. It's Just Ignorance.

We Are Only As Blind As We Want To Be.

When I Am Writing, I Am Trying To Find Out Who I Am, Who We Are, What We're Capable Of, How We Feel, How We Lose And Stand Up, And Go On From Darkness Into Darkness. I'm Trying For That. But I'm Also Trying For The Language. I'm Trying To See How It Can Really Sound.

If I Could Give You One Thought, It Would Be To Lift Someone Up. Lift A Stranger Up--lift Her Up. I Would Ask You, Mother And Father, Brother And Sister, Lovers, Mother And Daughter, Father And Son, Lift Someone. The Very Idea Of Lifting Someone Up Will Lift You, As Well.

The Truth Is, No One Of Us Can Be Free Until Everybody Is Free.

Exchange Love For Hate...thereby, Making The Present Comfortable And The Future Promising.

Inspirational Forgiveness

Courage Allows The Successful Woman To Fail - And To Learn Powerful Lessons From The Failure - So That In The End, She Didn't Fail At All.

People Don't Always Remember What You Say Or Even What You Do, But They Always Remember How You Make Them Feel.

In Spite Of Everything That Was Done To Me And My Race, In Spite Of The Adversity And The Bitter Moments, Again We Rise.

I Keep On Dying, Because I Love To Live

Ask For What You Want And Be Prepared To Get It!

Poetry Helps My Soul Escape Its Encasement.

My Life Has Been Long, And Believing That Life Loves The Liver Of It, I Have Dared To Try Many Things, Sometimes Trembling, But Daring Still.

If We Are Bold, Love Strikes Away The Chains Of Fear From Our Souls.

Some Of Us Are Timid. We Think We Have Something To Lose So We Don't Try For That Next Hill.

When We Cast Our Bread Upon The Waters We Can Presume That Someone Downstream Whose Face We Will Never Know Will Benefit From Our Action, As We Who Are Downstream From Another Will Profit From The Grantor's Gift.

The Difference Between Charity And Philanthropy Is The Distance Of The Soul... To Be Philanthropic Is To Give Something, To Be Charitable Is To Give One's Own Heart.

I Will Look After You And I Will Look After Anybody You Say Needs To Be Looked After, Any Way You Say. I Am Here. I Brought My Whole Self To You. I Am Your Mother.

The Real Difficulty Is To Overcome How You Think About Yourself.

Because Of Technological Breakthroughs, The Society Will Need Fewer And Fewer Unskilled Laborers.

It Is This Belief In A Power Larger Than Myself And Other Than Myself Which Allows Me To Venture Into The Unknown And Even The Unknowable.

I Believe That One Can Never Leave Home. I Believe That One Carries The Shadows, The Dreams, The Fears And The Dragons Of Home Under One's Skin, At The Extreme Corners Of One's Eyes And Possibly In The Gristle Of The Earlobe.

In A World So Rife With Vulgarity, With Brutality And Violence, Love Exists. I’m Grateful To Know That It Exists.

I've Learned That People Will Forget What You Said, People Will Forget What You Did, But People Will Never Forget How You Made Them Feel.

Prepare Yourself So That You Can Be A Rainbow In Somebody Else's Cloud.

Until Blacks And Whites See Each Other As Brother And Sister, We Will Not Have Parity. It's Very Clear.

I Became The Kind Of Parent My Mother Was To Me.

When Women Take Care Of Their Health They Become Their Own Best Friend.

Sunday, If I'm Lucky, I'll Go To Church Or Listen To Some Good Spiritual Advice On The Television Or On The Radio. I Take Three Or Four Baths To Try To Cleanse Myself, So I'm Fresh For Monday.

A Friend May Be Waiting Behind A Stranger's Face.

When The Human Race Neglects Its Weaker Members, When The Family Neglects Its Weakest One - It's The First Blow In A Suicidal Movement.

I Find It Interesting That The Meanest Life, The Poorest Existence, Is Attributed To God's Will, But As Human Beings Become More Affluent, As Their Living Standard And Style Begin To Ascend The Material Scale, God Descends The Scale Of Responsibility At Commensurate Speed.

Open Your Eyes To The Beauty Around You, Open Your Mind To The Wonders Of Life, Open Your Heart To Those Who Love You, And Always Be True To Yourself.

The Needs Of A Society Determine Its Ethics.

When I Love Somebody, I Like Him To Be Around; I Like Him To Take Me Out To Dinner; I Like To Look At The Sunset With Him. But If Not, I Love Him And I Hope He's Looking At The Same Sun I Am. Loving Someone Liberates The Lover As Well As The Beloved. And That Kind Of Love Comes With Age. Some Of This Wisdom Came To Me After I Was 50 Or 60.

I Think I Know That I Deserve Better. And So I Try For Better. I'm Never So Put Off That I Would Ever Walk Out Of A Place Not Having Tried The Best I Could.

Those Who Have Something To Say Accept The Fact That That's Lonely. One Already Knows That There Will Be Adversaries.

I Might Have It At Six-fifteen A.m. Just As Soon As I Get In, But Usually It's About Eleven O'clock When I'll Have A Glass Of Sherry.

All Great Artists Draw From The Same Resource: The Human Heart, Which Tells Us That We Are All More Alike Than We Are Unalike.

Because Of Our Routines We Forget That Life Is An Ongoing Adventure.

I Wouldn't Trade Anything For My Story Now.

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 Defence When And Wherever Needed.

To Be Human Is To Be Challenged To Be More Divine. Not Even To Try To Meet Such A Challenge Is The Biggest Defeat Imaginable.

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Jeff Greenfield

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