The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.

It is as though nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force.

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

Cannot the nation that has absorbed ten million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb ten million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?

Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation-we have fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer and warning have been given to this nation in blood brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this worth the striving? Would America have been America without her Negro 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.

The merchant must be no more pessimist than optimist, since pessimism induces him to hold back his capital but optimism induces him to take such risks that he has more to tear than to hope. Abu al'Fadl Ja'far al-Dimishqi (c. 9th century) Arab writer. The Beauties of Commerce Business pays ... philanthropy begs.

The future of American Negroes is in the South... . First and greatest of these possible allies are the white working classes about you. The poor whites whom you have been taught to despise and who in turn have learned to fear and hate you. This must not deter you from efforts to make them understand, because in the past, in their ignorance and suffering, they have been led foolishly to look upon you as the cause of most of their distress. You must remember that this attitude is hereditary and that it has been deliberately cultivated ever since emancipation. Slowly but surely the working people of the South, white and black, must come to remember that their emancipation depends upon their mutual cooperation; upon their acquaintanceship with each other; upon their friendship; upon their social intermingling. Unless this happens, each is going to be made the football to break the heads and hearts of the other.

We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.