I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.

A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe.

...of whom I can say with a grateful heart, 'I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in.'

If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.

Be not discouraged. There is a future for you. . . . The resistance encountered now predicates hope. . .

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.