Quotes About Empowerment

There is in this world No such force as the force of A person determined to rise. The human soul Cannot be permanently chained.

We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of them cannot read or write. This but partially expresses the fact. They are ignorant of the world about them, of modern economic organization, of the function of government, of individual worth and possibilities,—of nearly all those things which slavery in self-defence had to keep them from learning.

Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living—Liberty, Justice, and Right—is marked For White People Only.

For this much all men know: despite compromise, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free.

he question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meager chance for developing their exceptional men?

Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men?

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 ancient and outworn creeds.

while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success.

Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work—it must teach Life.

XV. FOUNDING THE PUBLIC SCHOOL How the freedman yearned to learn and know, and with the guiding hand of the Freedmen's Bureau and the Northern school-marm, helped establish the Public School in the South and taught his own teachers in the New England college transplanted to the black South.

By straining his political power to the utmost, the Negro got a public school system and got it because that was one clear object which he understood and which no bribery or chicanery could seduce him from advocating and insisting upon season in and out.

Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.

We argued, as we thought then rather logically, that no social class was so good, so true, and so disinterested as to be trusted wholly with the political destiny of its neighbors; that in every state the best arbiters of their own welfare are the persons directly affected; consequently that it is only by arming every hand with a ballot,—with the right to have a voice in the policy of the state,—that the greatest good to the greatest number could be attained.

obliteration of the Negro home. A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems.

A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations.

sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.

position,—for the Negro to realize more deeply than he does at present the need of uplifting the masses of his people, for the white people to realize more vividly than they have yet done the deadening and disastrous effect of a color-prejudice that classes Phillis Wheatley

There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.

Now that she thought of it, why couldn't anyone do anything he or she wished, given the tools and the time?

The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.

If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich; prove it by getting rich yourself.

There is a genius in every man and woman, waiting to be brought forth.

Guard your speech. Never speak of yourself, your affairs, or of anything else in a discouraged or discouraging way.

Just don't ever let it happen to you, Dolores. Let people just shit all over you. Don't you ever become some man's personal toilet that way I did.