The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.

Education and work are the levers to uplift a people.

A system of education is not one thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.

I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength.

An American, a Negro... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

From the very first, it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of natural internal leadership?

In the South, there was absence of any leadership corresponding in breadth and courage to that of Abraham Lincoln.

Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense.

The use of slave women as day workers naturally broke up or made impossible the normal Negro home, and this and the slave code led to a development of which the South was really ashamed and which it often denied, and yet perfectly evident: the raising of slaves in the Border slave states for systematic sale on the commercialized cotton plantations.

For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.

School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism - the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute - this is the only way of human life.

Reconstruction was a vast labor movement of ignorant, muddled, and bewildered white men who had been disinherited of land and labor and fought a long battle with sheer subsistence, hanging on the edge of poverty, eating clay and chasing slaves and now lurching up to manhood.

There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually, in the course of the history of slavery, recognized such men.

True leaders don't invest in buildings. Jesus never built a building. They invest in people. Why? Because success without a successor is failure. So your legacy should not be in buildings, programs, or projects; your legacy must be in people.

You weren't born just to live a life and to die; you were born to accomplish something specifically. Matter of fact, success is making it to the end of your purpose; that is success... Success is not just existing. Success is making it to the end of why you were born.

Whenever I talk about the Bahamas and its beauty, I could never stop talking about my God, who has given us all of this beauty.

When you believe in your dream and your vision, then it begins to attract its own resources. No one was born to be a failure.

Young people all over the world are very frustrated. They are very disillusioned. Many of them are turning their backs on religion. They are walking away from the faith of their parents, and most of this is because religion has failed them.

Death can never kill an idea. Ideas are more powerful than death. Ideas outlive men and can never be destroyed.

It is my belief that no matter how advanced man may become in science, technology, systems, and knowledge, he can never improve on the foundational precepts of marriage as the bedrock of social development.

Every human heart cries and yearns for the same thing: a chance to fulfill his or her own dreams and desires. Even the poorest man has a dream.

The Kingdom is the love of God prevailing in politics, in business, in government, in media. It is all the impact of the laws of God creating a social environment where the strong help the weak, where those who have give to those who don't. It's a society where relationships are built on love.

The people who have impacted the world didn't live long. Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy. These people who impact the world were not old people, but they lived so effectively that we cannot erase them from history.

Character in leadership is the most important balance for leadership. Without character, leaders have no safety. Leadership has no protection without character.

I think leadership is not something you learn; it's something you discover.

Trust is a product of test over time.

It is my conviction that marriage is such a good idea, only God could have thought of it.

The value of life is not in its duration, but in its donation. You are not important because of how long you live, you are important because of how effective you live.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

I hope I would not be so arrogant as to doubt anyone's religion or belief.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams.

I come from - I came from Wales, and it's a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don't waste time being soft. I'm not cold, but I don't like being, wasting my time with - life's too short.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one's nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

I'm not a health freak. I just work out every day.

I'm married. My wife, Stella - a beautiful woman. She's brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

I love roller coasters. I don't get a chance often, but I've gone to Magic Mountain and gone on the rides. I love roller coasters.

I've got a great sense of humor.

I love life because what more is there?

My philosophy is it's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

My father was grounded, a very meat-and-potatoes man. He was a baker.

My father wasn't a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher - one of those Victorians, hard as iron - but my dad was tough enough.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.