It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disenfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.
A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.
And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means.
Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.
Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.
It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world’s work to its highest perfection.
There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.
I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.
All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.
We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong – this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.