Singer Tina Turner has said "Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go, purge yourself. I did that, I had nothing, but I had my freedom. Whatever it is that’s bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out." If parents can instill this in themselves and in their children they are one-up on life's lessons.

On intellectual growth

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
—Albert Einstein

On fate

Fate is determined by what one does and what one doesn’t do.
—Ralph Ellison

On fear

To defend oneself against fear is simply to ensure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.
—James Baldwin

On freedom

A man is free when he can determine the style of his existence in an absurd world.
—James Cone

Freedom is a state of mind: a spiritual unchoking of the wells of human power and superhuman love.
-W.E.B. Du Bois

Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go, purge yourself. I did that, I had nothing, but I had my freedom. … Whatever it is that’s bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.
—Tina Turner

The only thing that can free you is the belief that you can be free.
—Oprah Winfrey

None of us who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
—Pearl S. Buck

On sincerity

Individuals are considered sincere when there is little or no discrepancy between the goals they seek and those they claim to be seeking.
—Leonard W. Doob

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
—Benjamin Franklin

On speaking and silence

I will begin to speak, when I have that to say which had not better be unsaid.
—Cato the Younger

Nothing more enhances authority than silence. It is the crowning virtue of the strong, the refuge of the weak, the modesty of the proud, the pride of the humble, the prudence of the wise, and the sense of fools.
—Charles de Gaulle

Sometimes it seems that people hear best what we do not say.
—Eric Hoffer

There’s something still better than silence, ’tis this—to speak the truth.
-Joseph Kimchi