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

Lift up your eyes upon This day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands. Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts Each new hour holds new chances For a new beginning.

Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.

Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.

A man is a god in ruins.

Great men exist that there may be greater men. 

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.

The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid but that which is in his nature, and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite productiveness.

If a man own land, the land owns him.

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

A great man is always willing to be little.

We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.

Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

I have yet to know a poor man who has nostalgia for poverty.

A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.