“The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.”

We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

There is no escape – man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

Never let your work drive you. Master it and keep it in complete control.

An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.

You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant.

Success always leaves footprints.

Holding a grudge does not hurt the person against whom the grudge is held, it hurts the one who holds it.

Whenever your life touches mine, you make me stronger of weaker… there is no escape… people drag others or lift others up.

You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.

Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your ‘civilization’.

In proportion as one renders service he becomes great.

From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

A farewell to my shadow is not my death; it’s my rebirth in darkness.

I’m scared to death of being poor. It’s like a fat girl who loses 500 pounds but is always fat inside. I grew up poor and will always feel poor inside. It’s my pet paranoia.

Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.

Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die.

The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

I just wish all these young black kids would realize how significant it is to stop acting a fool out there, killing each other, not getting their education. You know, people have died to put us in a situation to be successful.

I don’t need a man. But I’m happier with one. I like to have someone I can touch and squeeze and kiss. But I don’t fold up and die if I don’t have a man around.