#Personal Story Quotes

“My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.”

“[My teacher] basically bribed me back into learning with candy and money and what was really remarkable was before very long I had such a respect for her that it sort of re-ignited my desire to learn.”

“When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.”

“I wasn't the brightest kid in school. I was a backbencher troubling the frontbencher, and eventually I failed in my 10th grade. But then in higher secondary, there were only three people who got first division in arts, and I was one of them. So this tells you, where you put your mind and heart into, that's where you go.”

“When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn't exist. TV didn't exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.”

“I had my back waxed once by two women... and at one point they said, Do you mind if we take a break?”

“My first day in Chicago, September 4, 1983. I set foot in this city, and just walking down the street, it was like roots, like the motherland. I knew I belonged here.”

“My friends back in Barcelona called me by that name (Picasso). It was stranger, more resonant, than "Ruiz." And those are probably the reasons I adopted it. Do you know what appealed to me about that name? Well, it was undoubtedly the double s, which is fairly unusual in Spain.”

“Can you imagine me calling myself "Ruiz"? "Pablo Ruiz"? "Diego-José Ruiz"? Or "Juan-Népomucène Ruiz"? I was given I don't know how many names.”

“That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.”

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”

“No one in my family had ever attended school [...] On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name I have no idea.”

“Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.”

“I was neglected by my family because I had disappointed them - I'd run away from being forced into an arranged marriage, which was a big blow to them.”

“When I came to Johannesburg from the countryside, I knew nobody, but many strangers were very kind to me. I then was dragged into politics, and then, subsequently, I became a lawyer.”

“I was mentally, emotionally and verbally abused by my father as far back as I can remember until I left home at the age of eighteen”

“I sent a girl a picture of my d - k. I don't know what it is with females. But I'm not too good with that s - t.”

“I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.”

“When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.”

“Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.”

“In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.”

“I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.”

“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me.”

“When I was a teenager, I didn't get to do a lot of the things that other kids my age were doing because my dad was very controlling and he wouldn't allow me to go to school activities, like games and dances. So I didn't have positive expectations for my future or really dream about what I could do with my life. I was just trying to survive until I could get out on my own.”

“Being a Dodgers fan led to my first Air Force court-martial, but that's another story.”

“I went to my old school, where all the kids I'd been with for eight years were about to graduate. But the sisters wanted me to repeat the whole term; so I went to the principal and pleaded with her to allow me to graduate with my class. She finally agreed on the condition that I write the graduation play. It was called How Do You Spend Your Leisure Time?Catchy title, huh?”

“A political consultant, when we first started thinking about Senate race, said, "You can have one funny name. You can be 'Barack Smith.' Or you can be 'Joe Obama.' But 'Barack Obama' - that's not gonna work."”

“I didn't even complete my University Education”

“Many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahili for 'That One.' And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever run for president.”