The tragedy of this life is not failure, but low aim.

The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. It's not failure but aiming too low, that is life's greatest tragedy.

It is not your environment, it is you- the quality of your mind, the integrity of your soul and the determination of your will that will decide your future and shape your life.

. . . the circumference of life cannot be rightly drawn until the center is set.

In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

For nearly a century, the South made itself believe that Negroes and white people were really communicating. So convinced of this were the white Southerners that they almost made the nation believe that they, and only they, knew the mind of the Southern Negro.

Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done.