Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.

Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

Don't you love nobody better'n you do yo'self. Do, you'll be dying befo' yo' time is out.

Look lak she been livin' through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring.

I do not share the gloomy thought that Negroes in America are doomed to be stomped out bodaciously, nor even shackled to the bottom of things. Of course some of them will be tromped out, and some will always be at the bottom, keeping company with other bottom-folks.

Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.