With a great moral issue involved, neutrality does not serve righteousness; for to be neutral between right and wrong is to serve wrong.

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

The mass of the American people are most emphatically not in the deplorable condition of which you speak.

What counts in a man or in a nation is not what the man or the nation can do, but what he or it actually does.

I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope - the door of opportunity - is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.