All quotes

I would ten thousand times rather that my children should be the half-starved paupers of Ireland than to be the most pampered among the slaves of America

My heart rebelled against God, who had taken from me mother, father, mistress, and friend.

My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will.

Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery.

The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.

depriving individuals of the right to choose for themselves how to conduct their intimate relationships poses a far greater threat to the values most deeply rooted in our Nation's history than tolerance of nonconformity could ever do

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures

The highest result of education is tolerance.

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life.

With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope.

Each halt in his progress has been but a pause before a mighty leap forward.

Life is a fair field, and the right will prosper if we stand by our guns.

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

The optimist cannot fall back, cannot falter; for he knows his neighbor will be hindered by his failure to keep in line.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Joy deserted my heart, and for a long, long time I lived in doubt, anxiety and fear.

Their life seems an immense disparity between effort and opportunity.

There are, however, times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost.

My world is built of touch-sensations, devoid of physical colour and sound; but without colour and sound it breathes and throbs with life.

The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter.

Whatever moves me, whatever thrills me, is as a hand that touches me in the dark, and that touch is my reality.

With the dropping of a little word from another's hand into mine, a slight flutter of the fingers, began the intelligence, the joy, the fullness of my life.

Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.

Man is only what he becomes--profound truth; but he becomes only what he is, truth still more profound.

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.