Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.
I really have paid my dues. When I get to stay in fancy hotel suites these days, I remind myself of that.
Look at pictures of me growing up. It wasn't always the way it is now. It was a bumpy road for me.
I remember there was a time when people were saying I could never win again.
I used to psyche myself out. Only, back then, we didn't know the word 'psyche.'
The theme of the Labor Department's centennial is 'Then, Now, Next.' So in honoring Esther Peterson, we look not just to the past but to the future, acknowledging with honesty and a sense of purpose the lingering challenges we still face and the distance we've yet to travel before equality is truly a reality in the lives of all women.
I'm a long way from Ike Turner.
In the past, I may have felt quite trapped - rebelled a little bit and been quite defensive and not known how to relax.
That past is still within our living memory, a time when neighbour helped neighbour, sharing what little they had out of necessity, as well as decency.
They wanna see me pick back up, well where'd I leave it at?
I reject this idea that who Bernie Sanders was in the 1960s is irrelevant. Who you are and what you do, what you fought for, and who and what you fought against, is always relevant.
You are where you are because the generation before you paid attention to their broken heart.
When I was growing up, everybody in charge, my parents and teachers, had all survived the war, and they talked about the war like it was the Kraken - you know, this huge beast that roamed the earth during their formative years.
Long exercised in woes.
Perhaps not being very self-aware in the past masked depression. I think I was confused. I think I was immature. I think I probably was quite depressed.
In every man the memory of the struggles and the heroes of the past is alive. But these memories are not incompatible with the desire for peace in the future.
I've been through a lot in life, and had some ups and downs. It's what's led me to this day.
Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.
A lot of people say if they could go back in time they would not change anything. But, to be honest with you, I like it and I don't like it. I like the fact that all I went through as a youngster made me a great man, but just goin' through what I went through - I wouldn't wanna go through that again. I wouldn't wish that on nobody.
I believe this generation should know their history and they should know that the struggle's not over yet.
I don't do much recording anymore, but before I really stopped, I was glad to get five, five cent a record. That's why when I see people today and they complain about what they get, and I picked cotton for $2.50 a day.
I've had a long, long road with lots of ups and downs. But that's all behind me now.
If I take back any of the bumps, bruises or scrapes I've been through. I wouldn't be the same person.
Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn't like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time.
I like to use the hard times in the past to motivate me today.
