“Muscle is mighty but mind is mightier, and there is no field for the exercise of mind other than is found in the cultivation of the soul.”
“As a race we have suffered from two very opposite causes, disparagement on the one hand and undue praise on the other.”
“An important question to be answered by evidences of our progress is: Whether the black man will prove a better master to himself than the white master was to him.”
“Accumulate property. This may sound to you like a new gospel. No people can ever make any social and mental improvement whose exertions are limited. Poverty is our greatest calamity.... On the other hand, property, money, if you please, will produce for us the only condition upon which any people can rise to the dignity of genuine manhood.”
“Without property there can be no leisure. Without leisure there can be no invention, without invention there can be no progress.”
“We can work, and by this means we can retrieve all our losses.”
“Knowledge, wisdom, culture, refinement, manners, are all founded on work and the wealth which work brings.”
“In nine cases out of ten a man’s condition is worse by changing his location. You would better endeavor to remove the evil from your door than to move and leave it there.”
“If you have a few acres, stick to them.”
“Life is too short, time is too valuable, to waste in the experiment of seeking new homes. People are about as good in your neighborhood as anywhere else in the world, and may need you to make them better.”