“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.”

“But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.”

“Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.”

“A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.... We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.”

“When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.”

“As you head toward your goals, be prepared to make some slight adjustments to your course. You don't change your decision to go - you do change your direction to get there.”

“Be firm on principle but flexible on method.”

“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.”

“Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.”

“Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there, the whole aspect of things changes.”

“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far.”

“Things are often spoke and seldom meant.”

“"Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument,"Fair, kind, and true" varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.”

“Who has a book of all that monarchs do, He's more secure to keep it shut than shown; For vice repeated is like the wand'ring wind, Blows dust in others' eye, to spread itself; And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear To stop the air would hurt them.”

“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. . . .”