Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
A life is not worth much of which it cannot be said, when it comes to its close, that it was helpful to humanity.
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.
Decide to be your best. In the long run the world is going to want and have the best and that might as well be you.
The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that counts.
Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.
The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.
We shall prosper as we learn to do the common things of life in an uncommon way. Let down your buckets where you are.
The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.
Remember that everyone's life is measured by the power that individual has to make the world better-this is all life is.
The negro has within him immense power for self-uplifting, but for years it will be necessary to guide and stimulate him.
Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.
Whenever your life touches mine, you make me stronger of weaker... there is no escape... people drag others or lift others up.
I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.
Mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless the individual has worth.
At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.
In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
If you truly want to measure the success of a man, you do not measure it by a position he has achieved, but by the obstacles he has overcome.
Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.
Don't ever let them pull you down so low as to hate them. (also cited as: I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.)
You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.
In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.
It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.
No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
It often requires more courage to suffer in silence than to rebel, more courage not to strike back than to retaliate, more courage to be silent than to speak.
The time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to.
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Those who have accomplished the greatest results are those...who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient and polite.
The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.
I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice, for nothing else makes one so blind and narrow.
Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.
I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.
I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.
No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
Great men cultivate love and only little men cherish a spirit of hatred; assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.
Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.
Educated men and women, especially those who are in college, very often get the idea that religion is fit only for the common people. No young man or woman can make a greater error than this.
We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable.
The circumstances that surround a man's life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances IS IMPORTANT. His response is the ultimate determining factor between success and failure.
The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.
The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your 'civilization'.
From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.
I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim ""Do not get others to do what you can do yourself."" My motto on the other hand is; ""Do not do that which others can do as well.
No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.
Leaders have devoted themselves to politics, little knowing, it seems that political independence disappears without economic independence that economic independence is the foundation of political independence.
The man who has learned to do something better than anyone else, has learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner, is the man who has a power and influence that no adverse circumstances can take from him.
You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing. You will be no better than the most ignorant.
I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high-water mark of pure and useful living.