Stop using the word 'Negro.' The word is a misnomer from every point of view. It does not represent a country or anything else ... I am an African-American.

And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.

While most girls run away from home to marry, I ran away to teach.

Seeing their children touched and seared and wounded by race prejudice is one of the heaviest crosses which colored women have to bear.

It is only through the home that a people can become really good and truly great.

As a colored woman I might enter Washington any night, stranger in a strange land, and walk miles without finding a place to lay my head

To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of scores of colored youth.

Lifting as they climb onward and upward they go struggling and striving and hoping that the buds and blossoms of their desires may burst into glorious fruition ere long.

To the lack of incentive to effort which is the awful shadow under which we live may be traced the wreck and ruin of scores of colored youth.

A library is more precious than a bank.

I have never yet failed to get a hearing (with a Hindu) if I talk to them about forgiveness of sins and peace and rest in your heart.

I don't spend a lot of time here in New York. I didn't realize there were so many Bruins fans in New York.

There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas.

Nothing great ever came out of common sense.

I put my films together in Europe and it kick-starts the financing when I'm attached as an actress. It makes it easier to move forward.

Statistics do not convey emotion. They shock us for a minute or two, and then we click again.

I am a student of universal spiritual principles, and I read theology and spiritual writings, so my grasp of basic spiritual principles is fairly good.

Most mothers kiss and scold together.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.