Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.