From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one -- to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.
There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.
Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it.
Black people in America will never be free so long as they're on the white man's land. We can't be free until we get our own land and our own country in North America. When we separate from America and take maybe ten states, then we'll be free.
We arrange our lives-even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited-with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right.
Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains.
As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.