 An American, a Negro... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. |
| To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires. |
| The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery? |
| To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. |
| A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again. |
| If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth they have not often let their presence be known. |
| Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life. |
| One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. |
| A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills. |
| Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men. |
| The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. |
| When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings. |
| It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. |
| The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression. |
| But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire. |
