“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.”

The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

No one can degrade us except ourselves.

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.

I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you’ve over come.

Decide to be your best. In the long run the world is going to want and have the best and that might as well be you.

A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.

We must reinforce argument with results.

Great men cultivate love and only little men cherish a spirit of hatred; assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.

When something comes to my brain, I don’t ignore it. You never know what it’s going to turn into.

The reality is in this head. Mine. I’m the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, and sometimes other orifices also.

Anxiety is living with an apple on your head and you imagine that everyone you know stands watching with a bow to shoot an arrow at it.

Too many head-turners; not enough page-turners.

Visions of McDonald’s restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through my brain. I don’t believe in saturation. We’re thinking and talking worldwide.

It’s really never fair to judge people because none of us know what’s going on inside anyone else’s head.

You know what scares me? When you have to be nice to some paranoid schizophrenic, just because she lives in your head.