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.

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

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

We need to elect leaders who understand that leadership is about loving and serving people, not about self-advancement.

Sometimes rejection in life is really redirection.

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.

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

Sometimes even your friends don't understand your calling, your purpose, your vocation. But you have to stand in your truth anyway, and they will eventually come around to understanding you, if you do it lovingly.

I don't think I'd live anything over, even though I've made a lot of mistakes. I have learned how to see failure as a friend. So, I'm not one to live a life of regrets. I try to learn from my mistakes, but I'll take my life the way it is.

This administration and these folk who run Washington are no more interested in our welfare and our well being than the man on the moon. And we have got to start taking our destiny into our hands.

We come to know who we really are in life during the dark and difficult and desolate days of our journey.

Losing teaches you something

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

My personal assessment is that Dr. King is the greatest American we have ever produced. I can argue for Lincoln, I can argue for FDR, but for my money, King is the greatest American we have ever produced. His only weapon was love. He transforms a nation, transforms the world with one weapon and that of course being again the weapon of love. So that for me, King is the quintessential example of everything that I could ever want to be in my lifetime.

That is still the case in this country for too many students, the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you don't expect them to learn, if you don't expect them to succeed - then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think that what started out as a European Union originally was probably a really wonderful and world-changing idea, the idea of a kind of cooperation and interdependence between countries. But the idea that individualization would work on common ground, not on conflict, not against each other, but to find how each benefitted from the other I thought was an incredibly hopeful and positive possibility.

Be careful about gossiping because loose lips really do sink ships.

Live just because or live your life for a cause

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.

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

I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.

Loving your enemy is a radical concept.

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

Why don't we scale up those things that do work.