Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Quotes

It was my first time away from home, my first experience in an all-black situation, and I found myself being punished for everything I'd ever been taught was right. I got all A's and was hated for it; I spoke correctly and was called a punk. I had to learn a new language simply to deal with the threats. I had good manners, and was a good little boy and paid for it with my hide.

The lines I’m referring to, Lewis, are that Triumph and Disaster are the same. They’re both impostors because they are momentary. More important is becoming a man of convictions. Lasting joy comes from that.

I went back two weeks running, then three months after, just to be sure, and then a year after that. So punctual are they that they have trained the local birds to fly in for their breakfast.” Holmes sighed as he took a pull of his Partagás. “Rich or poor, Douglas, we are all creatures of habit.

Pride goeth before destruction,” he quoted, “and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Many people are born into their religion. For them it is mostly a matter of legacy and convenience. Their belief is based on faith, not just in the teachings of the religion but also in the acceptance of that religion from their family and culture. For the person who converts, it is a matter of fierce conviction and defiance. Our belief is based on a combination of faith and logic because we need a powerful reason to abandon the traditions of our families and community to embrace beliefs foreign to both. Conversion is a risky business because it can result in losing family, friends and community support.

A Little Fellow Follows Me

A careful man I want to be;
a little fellow follows me.
I do not dare to go astray,
for fear he’ll go the self-same way.
He thinks that I am big and fine ;
Believes in every word of mine.
The base in me he must not see;
This little chap who follows me.
I must be careful as I go;
Through summer sun and winter snow.
Because I am building, for the years to be;
This little chap who follows me.

I will always be proud to say that I was one of those little fellows. All seven feet two inches of me.

One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.

The good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.

In truth, all inventors only improve on what’s come before them. They should be called innovators rather than inventors.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Douglas wondered if his friend would make it out of this alive. He realized, not for the first time, that life or death was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the mission, their own small attempt to “proclaim liberty to the captives,” as the Book of Isaiah had commanded nearly three thousand years before. To engage in a war where there would be no material benefit for the victor other than the liberation of oppressed and victimized human beings.

The wash and rush of this human tide on the beach line of the Northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom, of a spirit to seize, even in the face of an extortionate and heavy toll, a chance for the improvement of conditions. With each successive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes more and more a mass movement toward the larger and the more democratic chance — in the Negro’s case a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from medieval America to modern.

Popular culture is the vital sign of the spiritual health of a society. How it portrays marginalized people, how it contradicts its own professed values, how it celebrates certain behavior over others, how it imagines fantastic ideas and worlds that never existed — and then strives to bring them into existence. It’s a cauldron of the boiling unconscious that then tries to sieve out the unacceptable.

Don’t hope. Hope is for people who aren’t prepared.

I’m an unwavering supporter of labor unions and understand that they are currently in a death struggle with corporate overlords grinding workers’ rights under their tasseled Gucci loafers.