“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this – with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need – this life is hell.”

It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disenfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.

The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.

We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.

As Negro voting increased, Congress got an improved sense of hearing.

We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.

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.

It is written on the gate of heaven: Nothing in existence is more powerful than destiny. And destiny brought you here, to this page, which is part of your ticket-as all things are-to return to God.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

If the earth is fit for laughter then surely heaven is filled with it. Heaven is the birthplace of laughter.

Next time a sunrise steals your breath or a meadow of flowers leave you speechless, remain that way. Say nothing, and listen as Heaven whispers, “Do you like it? I did it just for you.”

Your good thoughts, good words and good deeds alone will be your intercessors. Nothing more will be wanted. They alone will serve you as a safe pilot to the harbour of Heaven, as a safe guide to the gates of paradise.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

Your personal nature seeks its paradise.

Heaven has not learned of my arrival, and my departure will not in the least diminish it beauty and grandeur. I will sleep underground, for us ephemeral mortals, the only eternity is the moment and drinking to the moment is better than weeping for it.