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

Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.

Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document!

Neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

A man is worked on by what he works on.

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.

If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.

Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

The destiny of the colored American is the destiny of America.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

I’ll be a president who pushes toward the future. Not one who clings to the past.

Man cannot change or escape his time. The eye sees the present and the future.

No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.

Together we are the future of football.

In the future I’m going to devote less time to sentimentality and more time to reality.

Children are the future of our world.