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 Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.

Character is power.

Great men cultivate love...only little men cherish a spirit of hatred

Every person who has grown to any degree of usefulness, every person who has grown to distinction, almost without exception has been a person who has risen by overcoming obstacles, by removing difficulties, by resolving that when he met discouragement he would not give up.

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

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