If you want to feel humor too exquisite and subtle for translation, sit invisibly among a gang of Negro workers.

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.

[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.

Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.

Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.

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

Men must not only know, they must act.