There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.

In my contact with people, I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls – with the great outside world.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your 'civilization'.

Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.