To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts…

- Lillian Smith

When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.

- Lillian Smith

The point of life is to find the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality.

- Lillian Smith

Belief in Some One's right to punish you is the fate of all children in Judaic-Christian culture. But nowhere else, perhaps, have the rich seed-beds …

- Lillian Smith

Man, born of woman, has found it a hard thing to forgive her for giving him birth. The patriarchal protest against the ancient matriarch has borne st…

- Lillian Smith

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from maki…

- Lillian Smith

Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.

- Lillian Smith

The question in crisis or ordeal is not: Are you going to be an extremist? The question is: What kind of extremist are you going to be?

- Lillian Smith

I broke every barrier I could to see things as they are.

- Lillian Smith