This the American black man knows: his fight here is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or wins. If he wins it will be by no subterfuge or evasion of amalgamation . He will enter modern civilization here in America as a black man on terms of perfect and unlimited equality with any white man, or he will enter not at all. Either extermination root and branch, or absolute equality. There can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the west.

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The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.

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The cause of war is preparation for war.

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We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.

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Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.

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Ignorance is a cure for nothing.

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We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.

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The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

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Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.

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There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.

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