“Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.”

“If you are in a country that is progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed its because the women don't have education.”

“Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods, or tactics, or strategy. We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society.”

“If all the white people who claim they don't hate us would ever get together and do something to the whites who claim they hate us, we'd see some action. Talk is cheap, if white people didn't want to have a South African situation ... there'd be none. If white people in America didn't want segregation, there'd be none ... it is the man who allows him to lynch who is never seen.”

“You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress.”

“To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.”

“But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.”

“The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.”

“If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.”

“I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.”

“That nonviolence which only an individual can use is not of much use in terms of society.”

“Things are often spoke and seldom meant.”

“All hoods make not monks.”

“Twas never merry world Since lowly feigning was called compliment.”

“Let's go hand in hand, not one before another.”

“But clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose dust is both alike.”

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm”

“If I shall be condemned Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else But what your jealousies awake, I tell you 'Tis rigor and not law.”

“Tired with all these for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn.”

“When law can do no right,Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.”

“The house praises the carpenter.”

“If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.”

“Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.”

“The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.”

“Give obedience where 'tis truly owed.”

“The due of honor in no point omit.”