The destiny of the colored American ...is the destiny of America.

Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.

This is the thing that I was born to do.

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature; it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

Master of human destinies am I! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.

The generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

There's no such thing as chance; and what to us seems merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form—an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

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.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

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.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.

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.

The overwhelming importance of the atmosphere means that there are no longer any frontiers to defend against pollution, attack, or propaganda. It means, further, that only by a deep patriotic devotion to one’s country can there be a hope of the kind of protection of the whole planet, which is necessary for the survival of the people of other countries.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

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

You don't have to be big or well known to be great.

What exactly is your 'fair share' of what 'someone else' has worked for?

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support—kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

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

A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes…loses its moral rights to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow.