The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach

Man is what his dreams are.

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.

If what is communicated is false, it can hardly be called communication.

A child must learn early to believe that she is somebody worthwhile, and that she can do many praiseworthy things.

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.

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.