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.

I believe everyone is born into the world to do something unique and distinctive.

Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.

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.

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

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.

[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.