The circumstances that surround a man's life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances IS IMPORTANT. His response is the ultimate determining factor between success and failure.

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.

We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.

I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.

Political activity alone cannot make a man free. Back of the ballot, he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I resolved then that I would permit no man, no matter what his color, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.