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.

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.

There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise

Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.

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.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.

Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.

Practice is the process of moving conscious action into subconscious and unconscious action.

I’m going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I’d never lip-synch. It’s just not me.

In war, one cannot say what one feels.

Prejudice validates itself as righteous abhorrence of the criminally deviant. So Christian homophobia is just a metonym of that abjection in general.

The secret to success is action, not attitude.Your attitude doesn't matter. It is what you do with your time.

The accusation that we've lost our soul resonates with a very modern concern about authenticity.

You know, I can get kind of spunky or I can get tough, you know, that kind of tough, sexy look. But sexy? No, I don't think so.

There are children with dreams counting on us.

Whoever thinks of stopping the uprising before it achieves its goals, I will give him ten bullets in the chest.