No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and to let him know that you trust him.

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

During the next half-century or more, my race must continue passing through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all. This, this is the passport to all that is best in the life of our Republic, and the Negro must possess it, or be debarred.

This country demands that every race measure itself by the American standard.

There is no escape-man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.