We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.

I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.

The white imagination is sure something when it comes to blacks.

Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.

Sex was a pleasurable form of exercise, like dancing.

I remember when Lindbergh arrived in Paris, I was one of the first persons to know about his landing, because as the French people know that I was born in St. Louis, thinking I would be very proud to announce it to the public, they gave me the news first. I was then starring in the 'Folies Bergere.'