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 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.

Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done.

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

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

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