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I would ten thousand times rather that my children should be the half-starved paupers of Ireland than to be the most pampered among the slaves of America

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.

My heart rebelled against God, who had taken from me mother, father, mistress, and friend.

The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.

Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery.

depriving individuals of the right to choose for themselves how to conduct their intimate relationships poses a far greater threat to the values most deeply rooted in our Nation's history than tolerance of nonconformity could ever do

Their life seems an immense disparity between effort and opportunity.

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself.

What signifies the census--this periodical numbering of men--to one who has no friend?

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him

paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell

The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press

The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.

The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

The press and even the pulpit, in the main either by silence or open apology, have condoned and encouraged this state of anarchy.

The evil cannot be cured or remedied by silence as to its existence.

Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil.

Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

Cease your complaining and fretting; none of these things which you blame are the cause of your poverty; the cause is within yourself, and where the cause is, there is the remedy.

It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union.