It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success... All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.

If there's no struggle, there's no progress.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.