There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life. . . To seek a total unity is wrong. To give as much meaning to one’s life as possible is right to me.

Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment. Fully alive, fully aware.

There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.

Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you do or as fast. There is a time when you didn't know what you know today.

No one returns with good will to the place which has done him a mischief.

You must try to observe yourself more and more objectively, to look at everything in yourself as though another person.

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.

True success, true wealth, does not come out of the barrel of a gun.

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

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 inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Freedom exists not to do what you like but to have the right to do what you ought.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Either you will control your government, or government will control you.

Racial discrimination is not a permissible solution... that can only weaken the principle of equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Equal Protection Clause.

It is a socialist idea making profits is a vice. I consider the real vice is making losses.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.

You find out the necessity of Liberty as you find out the necessity of air—by not having enough of it.

Liberty only survives when it is defended.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.

On some preference esteem is based; to esteem everything is to esteem nothing.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, “Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.”

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

What is a man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaring evident which everybody had decided not to see.

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and . . . each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Fundamentally, there are only to ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion — the technique of the army and the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation — the technique of the marketplace.

If we are to achieve richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bond together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to allow his vision wherever it takes him.

Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles in the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.