“For nearly a century, the South made itself believe that Negroes and white people were really communicating. So convinced of this were the white Southerners that they almost made the nation believe that they, and only they, knew the mind of the Southern Negro.”

The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. It’s not failure but aiming too low, that is life’s greatest tragedy.

In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

He who starts behind in the great race of life must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.

Man is what his dreams are.

You have the ability, now apply yourself.

Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done.

Whatever you do,strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead and no man yet to be born could do it any better.

It is not your environment, it is you- the quality of your mind, the integrity of your soul and the determination of your will that will decide your future and shape your life.

It isn’t more light we need, it isn’t more truth, and it isn’t more scientific data. It is more Christ, more courage, more spiritual insight to act on the light we have.

A child must learn early to believe that she is somebody worthwhile, and that she can do many praiseworthy things.

It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.

It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.

Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.

The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach

We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose in this battle.

[H]owever hard the road, however difficult today, tomorrow things will be better. Tomorrow may not be better, but we must believe that it will be.

For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being – old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.

Most of life is grey, with a little tiny bit of black and white.

I’M INTROSPECTIVE, because sometimes I want to take “our” side without looking at the facts in situations like these. Sometimes I feel like it’s us against them.

If you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything.

Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood.

White liberals are the most racist people there are, because they put blacks in a box and insist that they think one way – and if they don’t, they attack them as illegitimate, all the while denying that their policies destroy blacks.

Women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances.

Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish.