The negro has within him immense power for self-uplifting, but for years it will be necessary to guide and stimulate him.

In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.

Don't ever let them pull you down so low as to hate them. (also cited as: I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.)

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.

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.'

You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.

The man who has learned to do something better than anyone else, has learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner, is the man who has a power and influence that no adverse circumstances can take from him.