“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

As long as I stay engaged with everybody else, then I’ll create more comedy. It’s just when I shut off and stay at home… What helps me is just to keep moving.

It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.

My lawyer has been a good friend of mine for a long time. He and I continuously have conversations.

So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

You might be tough, but you can only be so tough for so long, you know what I mean? The brain can only take so much damage. The body can only take so much damage.

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.