“Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by "we" I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn't.”

I was willing to do it. I was determined to do it. By the end of the day, that had become my reaction to all of the signs of hard things ahead - a new purposefulness, hardy resolve. Everything I'd encountered so far - the law, my classmates, the great piece of discovery - had left me in deep thrall and I was bent on making sure that continued. I would have the best of it, I decided, whatever the obstacles.

The new fashions sold in departmentstores had thrown skilled American seamstresses out of work, you see.They’d been displaced by immigrant girls doing piecework for a pittancein terrible sweatshops. I refused to patronize a garment industrythat exploited its desperately poor workers so heartlessly.And if that wasn’t enough to keep me out of stores, there was this aswell: I was determined to resist that shameless sister of war propaganda—the advertising industry.

I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For this is how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.

I looked at the campers, all of them grim and determined. I tried not to feel like this was the last time I'd ever see them all together. 'You're the greatest heroes of this millennium,' I told them. 'It doesn't matter how many monsters come at you. Fight bravely, and we will win.' I raised Riptide and shouted, 'FOR OLYMPUS!' They shouted in response, and our forty voices echoed off the buildings of Midtown.

Mindfulness has to do with waking up and living in harmony with oneself and with the world. It is examining who we are, constantly questioning our views of the world and our place in it, while cultivating appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive. It is the direct opposite of taking life for granted. It is empowering as well, because paying attention in this way opens channels to deep reservoirs of creativity, intelligence, imagination, clarity, determination, choice, and wisdom within us.

One thing I learned going through a storm and that is, you can Praise God in the dark! If God makes light to shine out of darkness, well bless God, I can call forth light into my situation. I am the light of God. Praising Him is not determined by day or night. In whatever state I find myself in, I will continue to acknowledge Him. Then and only then, He will direct my path.

“Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.”

“Whether we like it or not, we can never sever our links with the past, complete with all its errors. It survives in accepted concepts, in the presentation of problems, in the syllabus of formal education, in everyday life, as well as in language and institutions. Concepts are not spontaneously created but are determined by their "ancestors." That which has occurred in the past is a greater cause of insecurity—rather, it only becomes a cause of insecurity—when our ties with it remain unconscious and unknown.”

“My issue is race. I feel black people nowadays have to conform to this one ideal. We all have to be the same. We all have to be hard and ghetto and listen to only one genre of music which would be Rap and R&B. And if one of us steps out of the mold we're not black anymore. Well, that's dumb. When did music determine your racial background? Or a musical instrument? I can't believe the dumb things people say when you're doing something different. I mean, it would be ok if music and how you dress and act actually determined your race, but the last time I checked it was your genes that determined your color. And I think anyone who chooses to believe in this fabrication is ignorant. Isn't this what the Civil Rights Movement was about, equality? Didn't Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak of diversity and how we should hold hands at the table of brotherhood? Well how are you supposed to do this when we try to conform to this idea. Not conforming doesn't make you have less pride in your race but it's helping make a window of opportunities for your race. Well, as for me, I'm stepping out of the box and going forward to be who I am, and if people disagree, f**k them. I believe this will bring me closer to the goal that god ordained for me. And doing this doesn't mean I'm selling out my race, but it means I'm not selling out who I am.”