The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.

If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth they have not often let their presence be known.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.

Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.