The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American.

I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.

One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this - with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need - this life is hell.