Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination.

The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.

If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

No man knows what he can do until he tries.

As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.

The real servant of the people must live among them, think with them, feel for them, and die for them.

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.

For me, education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better.

The mere imparting of information is not education.

Make the most of the best and the best of the worst, and keep your standards high. Never settle for anything less than you deserve or are capable of achieving.

I want to be known as unknown.

I'm not a cruel man. I mean, technically I'm not a man at all.

The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.

My father was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men.

People whistle me because I am good-looking, rich and a great footballer. They are jealous of me.

Relish the fresh landscape of my wound, break rushes and delicate rivulets, drink blood poured on honeyed thigh.

If a person doesn't have the capacity that we all want that person to have, I suspect hope is in the far distant future, if at all.

My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen.

Accuse not nature: she hath done her part; Do thou but thine.