“Neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully.”

I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

What upon Earth is the matter with the American people? Do they really covet the world’s ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin?

Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for men.

My hopes were never brighter than now.

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value.

You have to take power. No one gives it.

Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.

A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.

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

Our destiny is largely in our hands.

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

Success always calls for greater generosity—though most people, lost in the darkness of their own egos, treat it as an occasion for greater greed.

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?

Censoring what you say is one of the ways in which people who are not nice can take away your personal freedom.

I enjoy irritating the people who enjoy being irritated.

Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.