My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.

I fall, I stand still... I trudge on. I gain a little... I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.

To be blind is bad, but worse is to have eyes and not see.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

The continued lynchings and other crimes against negroes, whether in New England or the South, and unspeakable political exponents of white supremacy, according to all recorded history, augur ill for America's future.

When all you can feel are the shadows, turn your face towards the sun.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.