The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?

There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.

The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

The cause of war is preparation for war.

This the American black man knows: his fight here is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or wins. If he wins it will be by no subterfuge or evasion of amalgamation . He will enter modern civilization here in America as a black man on terms of perfect and unlimited equality with any white man, or he will enter not at all. Either extermination root and branch, or absolute equality. There can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the west.

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.