If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay it.

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.