💬 Quotes

"Was man weiß, sieht man erst."

"Es ist nicht genug zu wissen, man muß auch anwenden; es ist nicht genug zu wollen, man muß auch tun."

"Niemand ist mehr Sclave, als der sich irrtheilsch frei zu sein glaubt."

"Das Schöne ist eine Manifestation geheime Naturgesetze, die uns ohne dessen Erscheinung ewig wären verborgen geblieben."

"Alles Geschehene ist nur ein Symbol, und indem es sich in den Mannigfaltigkeiten vollkommen darstellt, tut es im Kleinen das Große."

"Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen."

"Nobody knows anything about these men, who has not seen them in battle. There is a superstition that they will not look white people in the face; but I have seen them in the extremes of danger, and I never saw a man flinch."

"They were naturally cheerful, kind-hearted, and affectionate, patient under wrong, and full of gratitude for a kind word."

"It gave me a pang to look at them, and then to reflect that the people who had thus served them—who had held them in bondage, torn their families apart, and denied them common rights—were of my own race."

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S., let him get an old musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can give him back his-trowel."

"I have always believed that the most effectual way to secure the respect of the white race is to do whatever is undertaken as well as they can do it, or better."

"The magic of freedom had touched them, and they had begun to move."

"Seek out the people—those who need the truth and who will apply it. Do not fear them, for they are the creators of the future."

"Science is a great help, but without morality, it is merely a tool of oppression. The two must be fused in the pursuit of human freedom."

"Prisons are universities of crime, maintained at enormous expense to society, which serve no purpose other than to perpetuate brutality."

"History is not made by the great generals or statesmen, but by the unconscious millions who, day by day, build the structures of human society through mutual aid."

"To be a revolutionary means to live in defiance of a dying order, yet with an abiding faith in the creative capacity of the human spirit."

"A society based on exploitation carries the seeds of its own destruction; true order can only arise spontaneously from liberty and solidarity."

"I desired to etch deeper than the common, and to leave some trace of myself on the globe, like those who come before and are forgotten."

"The hours when the mind is absorbed in beauty are the only hours when we really live."