“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.”

“The patient must minister to himself”

“The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”

“Let a stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear.”

“If you follow the ways in which you were trained, which you may have inherited, for no other reason than this, you are illogical.”

“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.”

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“Determine on some course more than a wild exposure to each chance.”

“Hasty work and premature decisions may lead to penalties out of all proportion to the issues immediately involved.”

“There is no working middle course in wartime.”

“I am not bound to please thee with my answer.”

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

“In maiden meditation, fancy free.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“A young man married is a man that's marred.”

“O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear; your true love's coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know. What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies not plenty; Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure.”

“Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.”

“The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th' bottom of the worst.”

“Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech.”

“Tongues I'll hang on every treeThat shall civil sayings show. . . .”