“Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, he belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambitions of our brighter minds. The way for people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away.”

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.

Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.

Most men in this world are colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The future world will, in all reasonable probability, be what colored men make it.

Men must not only know, they must act.

All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.

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.

What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

I don’t need to be famous. I’m not that ambitious. At this point, if I’m not sucked in, I’m never going to get sucked in. Being the so-called hot girl, I disconnect from that. It’s not that deep.

I’m enthusiastic and ambitious, and I work hard.

I emphasize that I am full of ambition and hope and of full charm of life. But I can renounce all at the time of need, and that is the real sacrifice.

I just think a hustler’s ambition is that I never stop. I start off hustling and said I’ll never stop hustling. An ambitious hustler is the one to hustle the hustlers. When I grew up, my heroes were hustlers. Now I’m their hero.

The vague torment of ambition.