Breaking Cycles Quotes

Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes.

God said to Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee." God says to man: "First, get you out of your country, that means the dimness you have inflicted on yourself. Then out of your birthplace, that means out of the dimness your mother inflicted on you. After that, out of the house of your father, that means out of the dimness your father inflicted on you. Only then will you be able to go to the land that I will show you"

Do not let the future be held hostage by the past

Unless you loosen the hold that your past has on you, your future will unfold in much the same way . . . it is time to begin writing a new script that accurately reflects the beautiful, powerful, and worthy being you are.

I tried never to be defined by my past.

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

I have the impression that every time I'm heartbroken, I leave a bit of myself behind. I am the believer. I go back and do the same mistakes over and over again and sign them proudly.

What you see around the world is that poverty is not destiny. In other countries, much more systemically, student after student, school after school, year after year, educate poor and disadvantaged young people. And, so, anyone who says that you can't overcome these battles is a huge part of the problem.

Yes, your family history has some sad chapters. But your history doesn't have to be your future. The generational garbage can stop here and now.

I think it's your duty to overcome what you inherit in life.

We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.

If you decide you want to change your life around, it doesn't matter where you came from, what you did, if you were incarcerated or you are from the projects, if you are an uppity kid who came from a really wealthy family - and all of them do drugs and are into that life - it doesn't matter; come as you are, and God does his work.

I don't think it's helpful to go dismantling the past, but you can refuse to honor aspects of it that you don't believe in anymore.

Life is a process of working out what's not working for you and disentangling yourself from it and trying then not walk into the same thing again. Watching your patterns and correcting them if you can.

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

Our history is not our destiny.

We cannot keep on carrying burdens of the past and keep ruining our future.

I don't want to be overdramatic about it, but I'm starting to see a lot of my bad habits get the best of me.

We should never remain hostages of our past.

I didn't know that I could be an actor until I was 25 years old, and now I continue to go back to the prisons and probation camps and the inner city to say that you don't have to go through the violence, through the trauma like I did.