It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.
America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
One and God make a majority.
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
A man's character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.
