The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.
Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.
Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility.
It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
The dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer.
Race prejudice decreases values, both real estate and human.
We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.
Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.
To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, – this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society.
What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?
Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.
So often do you see collegians enter life with high resolve and lofty purpose and then watch them shrink and shrink to sordid, selfish, shrewd plodders, full of distrust and sneers.
I believe in pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves.
America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.
The cause of war is preparation for war.
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books. You will be reading meanings.