Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

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A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself

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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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Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem?

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The favorite device of the devil, ancient and modern, is to force a human being into a more or less artificial class, accuse the class of unnamed and unnameable sin, and then damn any individual in the alleged class, however innocent he may be.

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There can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race, or poverty. But with all we accomplish all, even peace.

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I am especially glad of the divine gift of laughter: it has made the world human and lovable, despite all its pain and wrong.

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Would America have been America without her Negro people?

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To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires.

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Men must not only know, they must act.

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