“The emancipation of man is the emancipation of labor and the emancipation of labor is the freeing of that basic majority of workers who are yellow, brown and black.”

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.

I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.

The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin–the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world.

Ignorance is a cure for nothing.

Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.

The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.

A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again.

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

The truth is, no man is white and no man is black. We are all freckled.

Black is not sad. Bright colours are what depress me. They’re so empty. Black is poetic. How do you imagine a poet? In a bright yellow jacket? Probably not.

All in all it was my intention to hold both the black and the white clientele by voicing the different kinds of songs in their customary tongues.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

Water from the white fountain didn’t taste any better than from the black fountain.

I don’t think it serves any minority or underrepresented group to be coddled. Because the world won’t coddle you. So I actually believe in tough love, hard truths, black and white.

This song ain’t black or white and as far as I know it don’t infringe on anyone’s copyright.

Black history won’t stop no bullets.