“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”

One ever feels his twoness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.

Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.

I believe that all men, black and brown, and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

It is the stars, it is the ancient stars, it is the young and everlasting stars!

Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem?

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.

Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.

Most men in this world are colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The future world will, in all reasonable probability, be what colored men make it.

Men must not only know, they must act.

All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

Life will knock us down, but we can choose whether or not to stand back up.

Don’t go for the booty if it kills you.

I thought you’d rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.

Some people are marching together and some on their own. Others are running, the smaller ones crawl. But some sit in silence.

The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don’t understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.

Choosing our own aims and seeking to bring them to fruition creates a sense of vitality and motivation in life. The only things that derail our efforts are fear and oppression.

No matter your position, circumstances, or opportunities in life, you always have the freedom of mind to choose how you experience, interpret, and, ultimately, shape your world.

Almost any decision is better than no decision — just keep moving.