I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim Do not get others to do what you can do yourself. My motto on the other hand is; Do not do that which others can do as well.

Those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms of the rich do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much sufering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.

It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.

The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christ like work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian.

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

Had I been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my color to do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort.

I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study... would be about the same as getting into paradise.

Too often the educational value of doing well what is done, however little, is overlooked. One thing well done prepares the mind to do the next thing better. Not how much, but how well, should be the motto. One problem thoroughly understood is of more value than a score poorly mastered.

I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not believe that one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced that he has a message to deliver.

The highest test of the civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

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

The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice, for nothing else makes one so blind and narrow.

It often requires more courage to suffer in silence than to rebel, more courage not to strike back than to retaliate, more courage to be silent than to speak.

The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.