When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.

I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls.

Cannot the nation that has absorbed ten million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb ten million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?

Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.