Howard Thurman Quotes

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

But...as bad as it was, I learned something about myself. That I could go through something like that and survive. I mean, I know it could have been worse--a lot worse-- but for me, it was all I could have handled at the time. And I learned from it.

Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.

My mom raised me to never have anything control me.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

No matter what happens to you, you can maintain your own control about what you believe and who you are.

I am going to walk away when I'm ready to walk away. Not because of a win or a loss.

I think I just have to control what I can control. I can control myself. I can't control anything else but what I do. I definitely know I can do a better job at that.

I wasn't going to let anything control me.

I've learned during my life that if I am in hell, I make my own glory. I've also been in glory, and perhaps I've made my own hell, but I certainly don't take anyone down with me.

I'm stronger than I think I am.

I've learned not to buy into what other people say. I've learned not to put dreams in other people's hands.

I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit.

I'm not going to let other people set my limitations.

Just because you had every right to feel sorry for yourself didn't mean you ever took the opportunity to do so.

True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon.

In this condition of the most devastating humiliation, I still possessed the most precious of liberties, that no-one could take away from me: that of deciding who I wanted to be.

It is by his freedom that a man knows himself, by his sovereignty over his own life that a man measures himself.

The reason why we're warriors is that we rise to the occasion; anyone that's felt like the system put them down, and then they rose to the occasion, they're a warrior. It's not about whether you come from the hood or you come from the suburbs, you know what I mean? It's about reality and life.

Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield,But to my own strength. Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,But for the patience to win my freedom.

I exist, I am, I am here, I am becoming, I make my own life and no one else makes it for me. I must face my own shortcomings, mistakes, transgressions. No one can suffer my non-being as I do, but tomorrow is another day, and I must decide to leave my bed and live again. And if I fail, I don't have the comfort of blaming you or life or God.

Your personal freedom to experience yourself and life as you wish is not being limited. Step into your choices and stop telling yourself that you can't, when what you really mean is that you don't want other people to feel the way you think that are going to feel when they see you making the choices you really want to make.

Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.

The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.