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.

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.

There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise

Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.

We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.

Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.

Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

People don't care what you name it, G. They like pie for what's on the inside.

I didn't want to be discriminated against because of my gender and status. I promised myself I was never going to be treated as a second-class citizen.

One thing is certain in life. Just when things are going well, soon afterward they are certain to go wrong. It's just the way things are meant to be.

I come from a family where my father is a filmmaker and professor of film.

It is a common fate -- a woman's lot -- To waste on one the riches of her soul, Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot Repay the interest, and much less the whole.

I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.

Pacifist propaganda and the resolutions of the parliamentarians encouraged such treaties, and toward the end of the nineteenth century their number had increased considerably.