To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution

Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

I hope you remember that you always have a place to hide, away from the noise of the world, away from all that dares to wound your heart. You can always hide within the merciful heart of God.

If you will not hear reason, she'll rap your knuckles.

The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.

When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.

Democracy in our time is more likely to die of indifference than of intolerance.

Think about the flowers. Life is just a bunch of pretty pictures. All this is supposed to do is force you beyond the mind, when you realize that you can't figure it out.

In many ways my paintings are about energy — both in how they are created and the image itself.

This is too much madness to explain in one text.

One of the great problems with Americans is that - being a decent people - they assume that everyone else is equally decent.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart-the best brain.