You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.
Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.
The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people.
The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.
There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.
Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.
I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.
I hear the mournful wail of millions!
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
He who would be free must strike the first blow.
A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
The opposite of compromise is character.
A government, founded on impartial liberty, where all have a voice and a vote, irrespective of color or of sex – what is there to hinder such a government from standing firm.
Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.
The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.
If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
The silver trump of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.