To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say 'Cast down your bucket where you are.'

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.

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

The wisest among my race understand that agitations of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.