“Some know the value of education by having it. I knew its value by not having it.”

A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.

I had as well be killed running as die standing.

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it’s privileges by the law of the land.

Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

Our community belongs to us and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered in shame, we cannot but share its character and destiny.

We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is work.

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.

My mom is from Jamaica, and she was going to school in the morning, and in the evening she was working, and at night she would go to night school and then come in and go to sleep.

A truly educated man never ceases to learn.

Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.

I believe that every American should have stable, dignified housing; health care; education – that the most very basic needs to sustain modern life should be guaranteed in a moral society.

There should be a course in the first grade on love.

Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.

Humans believe so many lies because we aren’t aware. We ignore the truth or we just don’t see the truth. When we are educated, we accumulate a lot of knowledge, and all that knowledge is just like a wall of fog that doesn’t allow us to perceive the truth, what really is.

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