“The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.”

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.

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?

Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee.

Dead yesterdays and unborn tomorrows, why fret about it, if today be sweet.

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.

We think about all of our tomorrows, but we don’t know how many there are, so let’s start making the most of our Todays!

I’m only waiting for Lindsay Lohan’s fashion collection to come out. Ten years from now, there may be no real designers left.

You knew the sweetness of now, now, TONIGHT! who cares for tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, yesterday is over and done, tonight live, tonight!

I picture myself now, and I picture myself in 30 years, and I’ll probably be the same. I’ll still think I’m not the greatest singer I can be.

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.