Today’s Thoughtful Thursday pays tribute to the gifted and beautiful actress, writer and activist Ruby Dee (October 27, 1922 – June 11, 2014).

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Here are a few favorite Ruby Dee quotes. Enjoy.

• The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within — strength, courage, dignity.

• God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.

• The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.

• Classism and greed are making insignificant all the other kinds of isms.

• You just try to do everything that comes up. Get up an hour earlier, stay up an hour later, make the time. Then you look back and say, “Well, that was a neat piece of juggling there — school, marriage, babies, career.” The enthusiasms took me through the action, not the measuring of it or the reasonableness.

• That’s what being young is all about. You have the courage and the daring to think that you can make a difference. You’re not prone to measure your energies in time. You’re not likely to live by equations.