Maya Angelou
African-American poet, memoirist, actress, director, and civil rights activist.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. [...] Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.
You don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.