A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.

It is unfortunate that we should find ourselves at this time the only disorganized group. Others have had the advantage of organization for centuries, so what seems to them unnecessary, from a racial point of view, becomes necessary to us, who have had to labor all along under the disadvantage of being scattered without a racial aim or purpose.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

There is no force like success, and that is why the individual makes all effort to surround himself throughout life with the evidence of it; as of the individual, so should it be of the nation.

No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.

I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free.

I read "Up From Slavery" and then my dream - if I may so call it - of being a race leader dawned.