“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.”

“Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”

“Yellow M&M's don't move with green M&M's. I mean, you don't put M&M's peanuts with M&M's plain.”

“In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like.”

“To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub.”

“Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.”

“Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus.”

“Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.”

“Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.”

“An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind.”

“Divers philosophers hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth.”

“You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame”

“For to define true madness,What is't but to be nothing else but mad?”

“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”

“With these shreds They vented their complainings, which being answered And a petition granted them, a strange one, To break the heart of generosity, And make bold power look pale, they threw their caps As they would hang them on the horns o' th' moon, Shouting their emulation.”

“I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.”

“Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear.”

“Let me confess that we two must be twain, although our undivided loves are one.”

“Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.”

“A lover goes toward his beloved as enthusiastically as a schoolboy leaving his books, but when he leaves his girlfriend, he feels as miserable as the schoolboy on his way to school. (Act 2, scene 2)”