Talib Kweli Quotes

It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey.

Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

I may err in judgment, but I hope not in intention.

Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life.

Even the men most richly endowed with ability, education, and opportunity, even the giants of the race, after the completest life possible, feel, as they stand on the edge of the grave, that they are but human acorns with all their possibilities still in them, just beginning to sprout.

You need to sweat yourself. Don't sweat nobody else.

You're not supposed to die with your potential. A life well lived squeezes all the potential placed within and does something with it.

Blessed with some success, so I'mma try my best to live my life right. When I see God, he'll be impressed.

My potential is what God gives me - that's His gift to me - what I give back to Him is what I do with that potential.

Don’t become me. Don’t let her down like I did. You only deserve what you make yourself worthy of. Do what I couldn’t. Be a man.

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

When a man does all he can, though it succeeds not well, blame not him that did it.

I look upon every good man, as a good book, lent by its owner for another to read, and transcribe the excellent notions and golden passages that are in it for his own benefit, that they may return with him when the owner shall call for the book again: but in case this excellent book shall be thrown into a corner and no use made of it, it justly provokes the owner to take it away in displeasure. --Funeral of John Upton, Esq

Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can't. On both occasions, the man breathes.

To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.

My history is long, and not much of it is good. I can't erase it, but I'm determined not to make another mistake. Not when the stakes are high, not when it comes to you.

I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand.

It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.

You cannot take credit for your talents. It is what you do with them that counts.

Never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself.

You drift through life and let things happen to you, or go by design and say, 'This is what I'm intended to do.' The Bible is very clear that God has a purpose. But even if I know that purpose, I can't fulfill it if I'm out of shape.

I made mistakes. I can’t whine about it. I’m the one that messed up and I’m paying the consequences. However, if I am given a second chance, I won’t need a third chance. And to be honest with you, I picked the wrong vice. I should have picked alcohol. I should have picked drugs or I should have picked up beating up my wife or girlfriend because if you do those three, you get a second chance. They haven’t given too many gamblers second chances in the world of baseball.