The circumstances that surround a man’s life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances IS IMPORTANT. His response is the ultimate determining factor between success and failure.
The man who has learned to do something better than anyone else, has learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner, is the man who has a power and influence that no adverse circumstances can take from him.
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.
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.
The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.
