“If we as a people realized the greatness from which we came we would be less likely to disrespect ourselves.”

To see your enemy and know him is a part of the complete education of man.

We must give up the silly idea of folding our hands and waiting on God to do everything for us. If God had intended for that, then he would not have given us a mind. Whatever you want in life, you must make up your mind to do it for yourself.

If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modern civilization and die from the effects of it.

Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden.

Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm.

The whole world is run on bluff. No race, no nation, no man has any divine right to take advantage of others. Why allow the other fellow to bluff you?

Take advantage of every opportunity; where there is none, make it for yourself, and let history record that as we toiled laboriously and courageously, we worked to live gloriously.

At no time within the last five hundred years can one point to a single instance of the Negro as a race of haters.

You must not mistake lip service and noise for bravery and service.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.

The history of a movement, the history of a nation, the history of a race is the guide-post of that movement’s destiny, that nation’s destiny, that race’s destiny.

I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.

Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America.

A man’s bread and butter is only insured when he works for it.

A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman are exact.

When all else fails to organize the people, conditions will.

But I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.

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.

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.

A great stench will come from Lausanne, but they will not know its origin; they will put out all people from distant places, fire seen in the sky, a foreign nation defeated.

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

I have learned to use the word ‘impossible’ with the greatest caution.