“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

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.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

The mind does not take its complexion from the skin.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.

A woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments.

Oppression makes a wise man mad.

What is possible for me is possible for you.

A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.

I had as well be killed running as die standing.

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it’s privileges by the law of the land.

Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.

Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.

In fact, Jesus is mentioned 75 times in the Koran.

I don’t go by the rule book. I lead from the heart, not the head.

Don’t worry about what you do not understand… Worry about what you do understand in the Bible, but do not live by.

We can grow so accustomed to being spoon-fed the Word of God that we sometimes forget how to examine the Scriptures for ourselves.

I can’t read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.

The more you read the Bible; and the more you meditate on it, the more you will be astonished with it.

To know yourself you need not go to any book, to any priest, to any psychologist. The whole treasure is within yourself.