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

No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.

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.

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.

I’ve made mistakes in my life for sure.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Insanity is coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and the key to release it.

The roaring seas and many a dark range of mountains lie between us.

Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life.

To play a repressed gay man, I had to explore what life was like in an era of sexual repression.

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.

A day without laughing is a day wasted