Man is what his dreams are.

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.

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.

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

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.

It isn't a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.

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