The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone to all of these.

O America, how you've taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.

Our children need our presence, not our presents.

Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.

It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.