Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People think if you look after yourself you're being selfish, you know.
Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.
The West Coast really allows you to understand who you are. You come across so many talented people you have to look back at yourself and see what makes you unique.
People know what they see but they don't know what's happening inside. If you want to know who you are and how you feel about yourself, take a look at your environment.
What I tell people usually is - don't look at others and be like them. Instead, find out ways in which you can augment yourself and increase your capabilities and use it in different ways.
You say to yourself: 'What could people, in all these countries, find in my books?' and yet I think we're all the same, anywhere. Everybody is a hero or a dramatic person in their own story if you just know where to look.
I know that sounds selfish, but you have to look at what it's doing to you personally - are you frustrated because of the way people perceive you, or are you happy enough about the things you've realized about yourself that you can tolerate the way people perceive you?
I think the lie we've told people in the marketplace is that a degree gets you a job. A degree doesn't get you a job. What gets you a job is the ability to carry yourself into that room and shake a hand and look someone in the eye and have people skills. These are the things that cause people to become successful.
Also, I think having that comic gene kind of makes you look at things in a different way. If you take yourself so seriously, eventually you end up one of those people having a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on their lives. You see them drawing the curtains and they don't even realize that they've kind of drifted off somewhere.
It's a totally different spiel when I talk at Morehouse. But when I'm talking at MIT? At the University of Cincinnati? I'm telling white people, in order to stop systemic racism, you must first befriend, become a colleague of, get to know intimately, put yourself culturally in the framework of someone who doesn't look like you.