"O, let my land be a land..." - Quote by Langston Hughes

“The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.”

“Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.”

“Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.”

“I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.”

“No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

“I rejoice that liberty . . . now finds an asylum in the bosom of a regularly organized government; a government, which, being formed to secure happiness of the French people, corresponds with the ardent wishes of my heart, while it gratifies the pride of every citizen of the United States, by its resemblance to their own.”

“Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.”

“When I meet people from other cultures I know that they too want happiness and do not want suffering, this allows me to see them as brothers and sisters.”

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”