It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.

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.

Whatever you do, do it so well that people looking on will feel that the task was reserved especially for you by God Himself.

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

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

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.