The streets and alleys of the ward were notoriously filthy, and the contractors habitually neglected them, not failing, however, to draw their regular payments from the city treasury.

Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.

The discrimination is not made openly, but a Negro who goes to such places is informed that there are no accommodations, or he is overlooked and otherwise slighted, so that he does not come again.

We muckraked, not because we hated our world, but because we loved it. We were not hopeless, we were not cynical, we were not bitter.

But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.

It is not short of amazing, the power of a great idea to weld men together. There was in it a peculiar, intense, vital spirit if you will, that I have never felt before in any strike.

There must be a technique for meeting pain. There must be a technique of endurance based on the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity, as Marcus Aurelius taught long ago.

And no book gives a deeper insight into the inner life of the Negro, his struggles and his aspirations, than, The Souls of Black Folk.

A few years ago no hotel or restaurant in Boston refused Negro guests; now several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionary stores, will not serve Negroes, even the best of them.

One of the points in which I was especially interested was the Jim Crow regulations, that is, the system of separation of the races in street cars and railroad trains.

A mob is the method by which good citizens turn over the law and the government to the criminal or irresponsible classes.

My pit of love is too shallow, I can't fall deep.

I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine.

What the individual can do is to give a fine example, and to have the courage to uphold ethical values .. in a society of cynics.

It's healthy to periodically self examine your life, your goals, your relationships, and ask yourself honestly, am I happy? Am I on the right track?

Democracy -- rule by the people -- sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

If there is a problem you can't solve, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it.

Just as women's rights are human rights, women's progress is human progress.

I'm fighting for the girls that never thought they could win.

I just think people should be able to express themselves.