“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”

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.

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

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

Any time you can degrade or take away the top leadership of an organization, it’s a positive step forward.

Marriage is a very sacred institution and should not be degraded by allowing every other type of relationship to be made equivalent to it.

A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego.

To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.

History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and most active.

What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.