All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.

I did take the blows [of life], but I took them with my chin up, in dignity, because I so profoundly love and respect humanity.

Sex was a pleasurable form of exercise, like dancing.

I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.

Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.

God dislikes evil, and no happiness can be built on hate. Love one another as brothers.