“There is no escape – man drags man down, or man lifts man up.”

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.

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.

Cosmic reveries separate us from project reveries. They situate us in a world and not in a society. The cosmic reverie possesses a sort of stability or tranquility. It helps us escape time. It is a state.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don’t want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don’t think art should be escapist. That’s a waste of time.

Whatever has befallen you was not meant to escape you, and whatever has escaped you was not meant to befall you.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality – the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

But you shall not escape my iambics.