Inspiring Mentors Quotes

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

I credit a lot of my success to being from Harlem, growing up there.

For eager teachers seized my youth, pruned my faith and trimmed my fire. Showed me the high, white star of truth, there bade me gaze and there aspire.

Something I've always said is if you think back as an adult to when you were in school, think back who your favorite teacher or your best teacher was, it was probably not somebody you liked, but they got more out of you than you thought you had.

I had an instinct to gravitate towards people who were smarter than I was, teachers that were nice people that were trying to do things in life that were constructive, and that's what I gravitated to instead of what I saw and what I was in.

I was blessed to have family members who encouraged me to pursue my dreams. Whether it is your parents, or your uncles or your aunts or even the neighbor down the road, it's important that kids have someone who encourages them to chase their rainbow.

The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers. Teaching is a calling, too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy-angles leading their flocks out of the darkness.

Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.

When high school students ask to spend their afternoons and weekends in my laboratory, I am amazed: I didn't develop that kind of enthusiasm for science until I was 28 years old.

I've been in constant awe of the people I've been blessed to work with and, obviously, who have had great success in the film industry.