The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been…

I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.

Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself,— that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.

I would rather be beaten in Right than succeed in Wrong.

Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty.

I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.