“Fake friends; those who only drill holes under your boat to get it leaking; those who discredit your ambitions and those who pretend they love you, but behind their backs they know they are in to destroy your legacies.” 

“We’re never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we’re bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives—although that’s what we tell ourselves—but because we’re wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.”

“What you’re saying may get you a foundation grant but it won’t get you into the kingdom of truth.”

“Life is about getting and sharing. The more you share, the more you get ....and the more you get, the more your sharing responsibility multiplies.”

“Elbert Hubbard said that the greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one.

“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and opressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”

“If you don't pay the price for success, you'll pay the price for failure.”

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”

“The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a patter of systems.”

“It's not so much that he can't fall in love, but he has not the weakness necessary.”

“That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes”

“My friends, life is so serious that if you are not aware of whom you are, your "youniversity" will be prestigious but unknown!”

“Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children.”

“I lived through this horror, I can take the next thing that comes along . . .’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’” She learned that “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions.”