“Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem?”

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.

The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin–the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world.

Ignorance is a cure for nothing.

Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.

The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.

A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again.

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: Not that men are poor, – all men know something of poverty. Not that men are wicked, – who is good? Not that men are ignorant, – what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

The cause of war is preparation for war.

In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.

Whiteness is ownership of the earth.

It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world’s work to its highest perfection.

There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.

The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

Wisdom leads us back to childhood.

Don’t force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It’s the child’s desire to play that matters, not the parent’s desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun.

I want to walk into a room, be it a hospital for the dying or a hospital for the sick children, and feel that I am needed. I want to do, not just to be.

As long as white people put people of color, African Americans and Latinos, in the same dispensable bag, and look at our children of color as insignificant and treat women of color as not as deserving of protection as white women, we will never achieve true equality.

I’ve always treated my children as beings in their own right. I respect their feelings and aspirations entirely.

My kid is not going to wear a flat bill.

As a mother you are only as happy as your saddest child

Having a teenage daughter is like riding a young horse over an unknown steeplechase course. You don’t know when to pull up the reins, when to let the horse have its head – or what.