“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, who is good? not that men are ignorant, what is Truth? Nay, but that men kn...”

“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?”

“[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and...”

“The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fin...”

“We are training not isolated men but a living group of men, - nay, a group within a group. And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man. And to m...”

“And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brick mason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, not sordid money-...”

“The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.”

“But instead of spending our lives running towards our dreams, we are often running away from a fear of failure or a fear of criticism.”

“The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly.”

“In an era of globalization, people recognize that they are part of a global society, but they have no idea how to make such a society work. So far, no unified vision or leadership has emerged to gu...”

“Everybody should be equal in a democracy - that is the nature of a democracy.”

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words ...”

“Truthfully, wicked people reveal themselves in words first, to inhibit speech would inhibit us seeing the wicked before they act.”

“Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the fi...”

“Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.”