All quotes

Make trial how the life of a good man succeeds with you, the life of one who is content with the lot appointed him by Providence

To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a sovereign lord.

As members of the minority party, we do not have the primary authority to formulate the policy of our government. But we do have the responsibility of rendering constructive criticism, of clarifying issues, of allaying fears by acting as responsible citizens.

You must make up your mind to steady and earnest work. You must be content to get on slowly if you only get on thoroughly.

And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.

And yet, in spite of the opposition encountered, and the obstacles opposed to their acquisition of knowledge and their accumulation of property, the progress made by colored women along these lines has never been surpassed by that of any people in the history of the world.

Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.

Shirking responsibility has never been a fault with which colored women might be truthfully charged.

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves

Why do they expect virtue from a slave, or from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?

Do not fall into the entitlement trap of feeling you are a victim, you are not. Get over it and get on with it.

The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it.

We do our best when our destinations are beyond the “measurement,” when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, when we have immortal finish lines.

No one may become a real leader in any walk of life without practicing the habit of doing more work and better work than that for which he is paid.

Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest.

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.

For equal work equally well performed by a man and by a woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone shall receive a less recompense.

Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be determined.

Give us labour and the training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves alone, but for the race.

That even one individual in a society should be debarred from undertaking that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary deficit in the general social assets.

The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; no will of man can recall them.

We demand nothing more than this, and we will take nothing less.

We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of the race.

It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results.