“I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.”

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Every dog must have his day.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

I’m as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.

The pain and emotional trauma caused by the racism and violence we are witnessing toward the black community has a long reach.

We are all one. Only egos, beliefs, and fears separate us.

Everybody’s life matters.

Why do you all push us around?

If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace.

Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

It would be very heard, for example, a basketball owner, no matter how racist he was, to try to operate without Blacks. It would be suicidal.

I was a person with dignity and self-respect, and I should not set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black.