It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.

He who starts behind in the great race of life must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.

Whatever you do,strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead and no man yet to be born could do it any better.

The creation of the spiritual was no accident. It was a creation born of necessity, so that the slave might more adequately adjust himself to the conditions of the New World.

It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.

[H]owever hard the road, however difficult today, tomorrow things will be better. Tomorrow may not be better, but we must believe that it will be.

We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose in this battle.