I, with millions of other Americans, have the same dream Martin Luther King Jr. had; when I wake up I wish some of the things I dreamt would be true. I wish that little black and white boys and girls would hold hands without being shocked at their nearness to each other and say in a natural way, "we have overcome.

The honorary duty of a human being is to love.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

Nothing will work unless you do.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right.

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. 

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. 

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that's me.

People will never forget how you made them feel.

Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

Self-trust is the first secret of success.

Self-command is the main elegance.

Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.

I have been writing and speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty years, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves.

Do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. 

Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints.

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency.