“In proportion as one renders service he becomes great.”

Don’t ever let them pull you down so low as to hate them. (also cited as: I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.)

It often requires more courage to suffer in silence than to rebel, more courage not to strike back than to retaliate, more courage to be silent than to speak.

In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists.

Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those…who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient and polite.

I believe that any man’s life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high-water mark of pure and useful living.

Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.

The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your ‘civilization’.

Even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.

Character is power.

From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.

Many strikes and similar disturbances might be avoided if the employers would cultivate the habit of getting nearer to their employees, of consulting and advising with them, and letting them feel that the interests of the two are the same.

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

Your life is an opportunity to give the gifts that your soul wants to give.

There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.

Love cannot be had for the asking; it comes only as a gift from the heart of another.

The less I spent on myself and the more I gave to others, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become.

The miracle is this – the more you give, the more you have.

Trust allows you to give. Giving is abundant. As you give so it shall be given to you. If you give with judgment, limitation and stinginess, that is what you will create in your life – judgment, limitation, and stinginess.

I think we need to recover the depth, the subtlety, the generosity of imagination, the respect for wisdom that so marked Islam in its great ages.