Tavis Smiley Quotes

The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category..

[In a blogosphere] everybody has an opinion now, but I don't really freaking care about - all opinions ain't created equal, because everybody can go out there and express themselves and hide behind some character we don't know who you really are, a bunch of cowards.

Sometimes rejection in life is really redirection.

I learned early on that it's heartbreaking to - there's the editor that comes in, and then they have to craft the movie together, and sometimes you give a whole performance that's just been cut up, and maybe it's better for it, absolutely, but you still have to deal with the loss of that.

I fear that we are living in a society, living in a world where forgiving people is becoming more and more difficult to do.

Don't envy someone else's gift. Discover your own.

Jamestown changed the world in many ways, but perhaps it shaped our nation most profoundly the day Africans arrived. I can't think of a more relevant place to talk about the issues facing our community today than the place where African culture became American culture.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

Poverty and wealth inequality are a form of instability into the future.

I think a lot of people who go to drama school have this ease with the text and they all have five monologues that they know by heart, and I never had that. I've done Chekov and I've done Moliere and I've done classic stuff

I grew. Going outside my comfort zone is a big one for me.

I wanted to be a theater actress, and initially, I wanted to work in musical theater

Fear, fear, breeds hopelessness. When you're afraid, you don't know what to believe in, you don't know what to hold on to. You're struggling to find something to believe in.

In some states, not even 50 percent of black boys finish high school.

I'm very musically curious and I love new experience. I'm an adventurer. Some people want to sort of stay in a safe zone and repeat the same things and give them more depth, and I want to do new things all the time

The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change.

If you don't have courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues.

The draft," he shouts, "is white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend the land they stole from red people. The draft must end: not tomorrow, not next week, but today.

All he could think of was how all people require attention. All people require respect. All people require acknowledgment. All people require love.

I thought our community should have a deep dialogue to make black America better. I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.

Struggling to stay in the middle class, and I love that. That's me and my dad and my family.

Regardless of your race, religion or political affiliation, never hesitate to question those in authority.

I feel like I've been successful after being done with the film is when I see it, if I'm embarrassed, if I'm slightly mortified, and if I feel super-vulnerable, I think I did something.

Take your focus off how others see you. Cease being obsessed with the need to impress your friends and your foes. Keep your concern on the vision you see in the mirror. Don't allow the approval of others to obstruct your view of you.

Troubled times do call for troubled songs, songs that unsettle our souls and our spirits unapologetically.

I love the fight. I don't - it's not a negative, it's a positive, and I love the challenge. There's that little part of me that I love proving someone wrong in that way when they have an image of me or something, or they think they have me figured out or they think I'm a certain way.

Well, if that's the case, then it's not silly to see rejection as a gift whose contents and character may not be known until a later time. But that doesn't mean that the gift isn't real. It doesn't mean that the gift isn't precious. And it doesn't mean that the gift isn't helping us to subtly shift our thinking from willful expectation to grateful acceptance. We want our journey to be directed by God, not our adamant insistence that things go our way." "I may be guilty of that very tendency," I

My role on television is one of helping people reexamine the assumptions that they hold. I regard Dr. King. You would never hear me get up and speak without in some way, shape or form, referencing, Dr. King.

I can't count the number of people I've talked to over the course of my career who have said to me that the thing that they most regret is the one time they did something just for the money.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is the most insightful and inspiring columnist of his generation.

What determines your altitude in life is your attitude.

I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child.

This country is going to implode, or put another way, it's going to get crushed under the weight of poverty. You can't have one percent of the people who own and control more wealth than the other 90 percent of the population.

Competition's always been a product of American lifestyle

When it comes to the president, we have to respect him, we have to protect him, and we have to correct him. And in my career, since he'd been on the national stage at least, I've had - I've always respected the president.

Since time immemorial wise people have been saying that all comparisons are odious. When we compare, we set up a winner-loser dynamic. If my crisis is greater than yours, then yours is belittled and insignificant. I say that's nonsense. Each crisis has its own power, its own unique reality.

When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for?

How do you grow up in the shadow of a guy - I want to talk about the movie in a second - but how do you grow up in the shadow of a guy who really is a legend in his own time?

Poverty is not the stepchild of the Great Recession; poverty has always been a part of American life.