Neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully.

Every one of us should be ashamed to be free while his brother is a slave.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.

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

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty