Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

America is in trouble today not because her people have failed, but because her leaders have failed

In my generation, we learned how to be leaders by being exposed to and involved with adults who empowered us and gave us a sense that we could choose things. We've let down the generations coming behind us and we are trying to re- establish that connection.

Young people are the same as they always were. They are just as ignorant.

That is my job as an intellectual, as an extension of my vocation: to engage in a serious reckoning with the present manifestation of both white supremacy, white refusal to acknowledge culpability, and the attempts of black people to re-describe the harm and trauma we've endured, as well as to say afresh what it is that must be done if we are to be conscientious.

...is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? ...the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

Barack Obama's failed us. But look, it's understandable. A lot of people fail at their first job.

I've been obsessed with stopping people from blowing each other's brains out since I was ten.

Our job is to make change. Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they'd like to go. Every time we waste that opportunity, every page or sentence that doesn't do enough to advance the cause is waste.

In my view, one of the major reasons that we have so many people in jail is that we have turned our backs on a lot young people.

We're giving jobs to people who would otherwise be out of work if we weren't exploiting cheap labor.

We have a moral obligation to make sure the people who are being required to work have the opportunity to work. We must make sure the jobs are there.

I admire the good samaritan, but I don't want to be one.I don't want to spend my life picking up people by the side of the road after they have been beaten up and robbed.I want to change the Jericho road, so that everybody has an opportunity for a job, education, security, health.

Old people go to the polls because they can't get erections, young people stay home, do drugs and have sex.

I think a mentor gets a lot of satisfaction in a couple of ways. They're doing something constructive, so they feel good about that. And when they see the results of this, with the young people they're working with, it's very, very rewarding.

All of us have to do a better job of teaching young people not to let themselves be defined by the words other people use against them.

You know what needs to be done when you're a writer. You know what the job is, particularly if you're an African American writer, or if you deal with people, or if your subjects are poor people or people who need voice. So you don't really need to know whether or not you are doing the right thing. What you have to be wary of if you're doing the right thing to the right level that will surpass your own life. I'm hoping that my work will surpass my own life.

If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will all disappear then they will - all of them, an entire generation of people. And we will have only history left to judge us.

There's much talk about the problems of youth, but young people are not a problem. It's a natural evolution of things. We, who have known only how to make war and slaughter people, have no right to judge them, nor can we teach them anything.

I think Katrina is one more indication of how inefficient and corrupt this Administration is, and indicates the absolute lack of seriousness that [George W.] Bush has in making the government respond to the needs of the people. They are so separated from the lives of normal, low-income people that it never occurred to them that if you're poor and have no money, no car, that you can't leave.

We're living through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world. Our jobs have been stolen from us and we have people that don't know what they are doing, in particular our leadership.

I'm concerned that the world is a mess. That's why when I wrote my last book, Let's Face It, I dedicated it to the younger generation because, let's face it, the world is in a mess. Right now, the young people will inherit that mess. I think we have to do everything we can.

I've always wanted to help build a better society and build a better company, and I always wanted a healthy, vibrant company, a healthy, vibrant society. We take care of our people, we provide them with opportunity. But I've always believed business is here to serve your clients, your shareholders, your communities. If we do this well, everyone benefits. We have to do a good job for all of them.

It just so happens that when I was, like, 19 or 20, I got a couple of auditions and got a couple parts with good people. Of the thousands of auditions where you don't get the part, I've done a couple of jobs where you do it and you're like, "Okay, this is good."

I want to serve. I want to serve the people. I want every girl, every child, to be educated.

We should see schools as safe arenas for experimenting with life, for discovering our talents... for taking responsibity for tasks and others people, for learning how to learn... and for exploring our beliefs about life and society.