“We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.”

You have to take power. No one gives it.

Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.

A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.

Some know the value of education by having it. I knew its value by not having it.

Our destiny is largely in our hands.

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

What to the Slave is the 4th of July.

It’s a poor rule that won’t work both ways.

The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

It is better to be part of a great whole than to be the whole of a small part.

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.

You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.

We have such an amazing future ahead of us.

By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future.

I don’t want any special powers. I’m powerless. I wouldn’t want to see into the future, I wouldn’t want to know what anyone was thinking, ever! And I don’t want to relive my past.

What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

I have great expectations for the future, because the past was highly overrated.

Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let’s think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow.

I’ve learned that fear is simply an illusion based on past experiences that we project into the present and onto the future.

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.