In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Ignorance is more costly to the State than education.

To those of my race who . . . underestimatethe importance of cultivating friendly relationswith the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, “Cast down yourbucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of allraces by whom we are surrounded.

The last I heard of the young man in question, he was trying to eke out a miserable existence as a book agent while he was looking about for a position somewhere with the Government as a janitor or for some other equally humble occupation.

I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim, “Do not get others to do what you can do yourself.” My motto on the other hand is, “Do not do that which others can do as well.”

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and to let him know that you trust him.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them, we are coming up. And with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress.

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.