“We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions…”

I have an inner satisfaction of having done what I thought was right at the time which I thought was propitious.

Justice is never given; it is exacted.

We seek the right to play our part in advancing the cause of national defense and national unity. But certainly, there can be no true national unity where one-tenth of the population is denied their basic rights as American citizens.

Lincoln was the spokesman of the rising capitalist class of the North, who viewed the emancipation of Negro slaves as indispensable to the development and triumph of the manufacturers and bankers of the industrial North, East and West over the slave-holder of the South.

I personally pledge myself to openly counsel, aid, and abet youth, both black and white, to quarantine any Jim Crow conscription system.

The Negro was a political football between his former slave master and Northern political adventurers.

If someone tried to deprive you of your rights, you’ve got to resist it. You’ve got to resent it. You’ve got to fight against it.

Since almost all Negroes are workers, live on wages, and suffer from the high cost of food, clothing and shelter, it is obvious that the Republican and Democratic Parties are opposed to their interests.

Freedom is never given; it is won.

I am prepared to oppose a Jim Crow army till I rot in jail.

I don’t ever remember a single day of hopelessness. I knew from the history of the labor movement, especially of the black people, that it was an undertaking of great trial. That, live or die, I had to stick with it, and we had to win.

I suggest that ten thousand Negroes march on Washington, D.C., the capital of the Nation, with the slogan, ‘We loyal Negro American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country.’

Men cannot win freedom unless they win equality. They cannot win equality unless they win freedom.

Loyalty is meaningless; it depends on what one is loyal to.

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

Negroes are in no mood to shoulder guns for democracy abroad while they are denied democracy here at home.

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

It was only one life. What is one life in the affairs of a state?

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.

I have a genuine love affair with my audience. When I’m on stage they’re not privileged to see me. It’s a privilege for me to see them.