The Ride True friendship and unconditional love are rare because each one requires a level of reciprocity that some are not willing to express. Not everyone you love, protect, or defend will do the same for you. Sometimes the people you would do anything for will not life a finger for you. It's a painful yet powerful truth to accept, but sometimes the lesson is less about trusting or expecting things from others and more about the importance of being able to stand by yourself. Being able to clap for yourself. Being able to grow even whenever it seems like everyone and everything is against you. Not everyone is going to ride with you, but you have to keep going.

If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you'll end up not doing anything for anybody.

Breaking the Orphaned Spirit

"If, for example, one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only Negroes, you'd be liberating white people who know nothing about their own history. And the reason is that if you are compelled to lie about one aspect of anybody's history, you must lie about it all."