“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’.”

Success is not measured by where you are in life, but the obstacles you’ve over come

We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.

The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.

Success waits patiently for anyone who has the determination and strength to seize it.

Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.

If you truly want to measure the success of a man, you do not measure it by a position he has achieved, but by the obstacles he has overcome.

My whole life has largely been one of surprises.

We shall prosper as we learn to do the common things of life in an uncommon way. Let down your buckets where you are.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.

It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.

Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems that political independence disappears without economic independence that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.

Ignorance is more costly to any State than education.

A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.

A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.

Social science affirms that a woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization.

You can be strong without being involved in every single civil war around the world.

And when the time is right, I hope that African Americans will again look to the party of emancipation, civil liberty, and individual freedom.

In a free society we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior, but if we’re civilized people we publicly criticize that and don’t belong to those groups or associate with those people.

Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws.