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No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
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No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.
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You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
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At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.
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There is no escape - man drags man down, or man lifts man up.
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One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
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There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
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We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.
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Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
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No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
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The unprecedented leap the Negro made when freed from the oppressing withes of bondage is more than deserving of a high place in history. It can never be chronicled. The world needs to know of what mettle these people are built.
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There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
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To hold a man down, you have to stay down with him.
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Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.
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Character is power.
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We must reinforce argument with results.
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Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
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In all things social as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
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I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.
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Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
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I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.
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In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.
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The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.
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Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.