Cicely Tyson Quotes

“You never know what motivates you.”

“I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.”

“Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch what make you go beyond the norm.”

“If and when our civilization comes to ruin, the destructive agent will be Science; man's knowledge of science, applied to warfare, meaning slaughter not only of human bodies, but of human institutions, of all we have created through the centuries.”

“How people die remains in the memory of those who live on.”

“I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.”

“Serving [Hamilton's] legacy didn't just mean commemorating him, though: It also meant continuing his work. [Eliza] crusaded against slavery, as Hamilton had. And this widow of an orphan helped to found the first private orphanage in New York. That's the real power of a legacy: We tell stories of people who are gone because like any powerful stories, they have the potential to inspire, and to change the world.”

“On opening night, standing under the Rogers's marquee, [Lin] realized that if Eliza's struggle was the element of Hamilton's story that had inspired him the most, then the show itself was a part of her legacy.”

“Jefferson feared that Hamilton had plans radically at odds with the Constitution. As he saw it, Hamilton wanted to warp the federal government out of constitutional shape, converting it into a copy of the British government, built on debt, corruption, and influence. Hamilton's goal, Jefferson charged, was to ally the rich and well born with the government at the people's expense, creating a corrupt aristocracy leagued with the government against the people and destroying the virtue that was the basis of republican government. Only a republic could preserve liberty, Jefferson insisted, and only virtue among the people could preserve a republic.”

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism”