Ain't No Mountain High Enough

On this last day of Kwanzaa (IMANI), we celebrate the will, and faith, and faith in action that allowed our ancestors to persevere, against every odd, and testify to the power of soulful grit. Failure be damned.

Mary McLeod Bethune 

"Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible." Source: My Last Will and Testament (1955)

Howard Thurman 

"Faith is the spirit's way of looking at a mountain and seeing a road." Source: Meditations of the Heart (1954)

Harriet Tubman 

"If you are tired, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going." Source: Attributed oral history

Booker T. Washington 

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." Source: Up from Slavery (1901)

James Baldwin 

"I know that what I am asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one can demand." Source: The Fire Next Time (1963)

Maya Angelou 

"You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it." Source: Interview with Psychology Today (2008)

Alice Walker 

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." Source: You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981)

Bessie Coleman 

"I refused to take no for an answer. I knew that once I was in the air, I would be free from the prejudices of the earth. The impossible was just a flight away." Source: Interview with the Chicago Defender (1921)

Ben Okri 

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering." Source: The Famished Road (1991)

Zora Neale Hurston 

"Possibilities are the bread of the soul. No matter how far a person can go, the horizon is still way beyond you, and that is where faith begins." Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)

Nikki Giovanni 

"I really don’t think life is about the 'I-could-have-beens.' Life is only about the 'I-tried-to-do-it.' I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try." Source: Conversations with Nikki Giovanni(1971)

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 

"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough." Source: Commencement Address at Harvard University (2011)

Kwame Nkrumah 

"Forward ever, backward never. We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility." Source: I Speak of Freedom (1961)

Thomas Sankara 

"We must dare to invent the future. Everything that man can imagine, he can also create." Source: Freedom: The Message of Thomas Sankara

Aimé Césaire 

"For it is not true that the work of man is finished, that we have nothing more to do in the world... but the work of man has only just begun." Source: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939)

Haile Selassie 

"Faith in the rightness of our cause is our greatest weapon. We must persevere in the face of the seemingly impossible, for truth is the ultimate victor." Source: Address to the League of Nations (1936)

Samora Machel 

"Victory is certain. The struggle continues because we have faith in the destiny of our people to be free and self-determining." Source: Mozambique: Sowing the Seeds of Revolution

Nelson Mandela 

"It always seems impossible until it's done." Source: Long Walk to Freedom (1994)

Alexander Crummell 

"The restoration of our people is a divine vocation. We believe in the future because we have survived the past, and that survival is the evidence of our victory." Source: The Future of Africa (1862)