“I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim “”Do not get others to do what you can do yourself.”” My motto on the other hand is; “”Do not do that which others can do as well.”

The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that counts.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice, for nothing else makes one so blind and narrow.

There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.

Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

Educated men and women, especially those who are in college, very often get the idea that religion is fit only for the common people. No young man or woman can make a greater error than this.

It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for oneself.

The circumstances that surround a man’s life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances IS IMPORTANT. His response is the ultimate determining factor between success and failure.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

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.

The most incredible beauty and the most satisfying way of life come from affirming your own uniqueness.

The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.

With each passing moment of life, we learn lesson, but it is upto us to affirm and grow from that.

Beauty is not skin-deep; it can be a means of self-affirmation, a true indicator of personality and confidence.

Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as periods of great human affirmation.

Acceptance is an act of the heart. To accept someone is to affirm to them that you think it’s a very good thing they are alive.

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.

Affirmations don’t make something happen; they make something welcome.