Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

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

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever... I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.