Resilience

Use your imagination. Don't be afraid. The failures that we may have will result in success someday.

They didn't fail less. They rescued more.

The only failure is the failure to rescue something. The difference between triumph and defeat isn't about your willingness to take the risk — it's about mastery of rescue afterwards.

Continue to share your heart with people even if it's been broken. Don't treat your heart like an action figure wrapped in plastic and never used.

Fear or faith, which will be our master? Fear is whispered in our ears and shouted in our faces. Faith must be fostered by the man or woman you see every day in the mirror.

To create in those waters, we must have more than an optimist's escapism. Today, to create is to hope. To create is to live.

Love is today mingled with grief. And yet love grows greater. Create in and through that love. Calm the seas of your anxiety and infuse new life deep into the poisoned wells of culture.

Pessimists do not change the world. They don't think it's worth the trouble. But you can.

Every defeat to me was a challenge. And for six generations, that is what Spelman women have done. They have seen every defeat as a challenge.

Sometimes I'd save them the trouble and raise the questions myself, in my own head, lying awake at night, doubting whether I had what it took to succeed.

Don't let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face — and there will be barriers — be external, not internal. Fortune does favor the bold, and I promise that you will never know what you're capable of unless you try.

In any given moment, one lives one's life in one of two ways: either under a threat or for a challenge. If imagination will take you everywhere, then living under a threat will take you nowhere.