Mary Mcleod Quotes

#1. My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.

Langston Hughes

#2. We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#3. Without faith nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#4. I do feel, in my dreamings and yearnings, so undiscovered by those who are able to help me.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#5. Studying goes deeper than mere reading. There are surface nuggets to be gathered but the best of the gold is underneath, and it takes time and labor to secure it.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#6. I never stop to plan. I take things step by step.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#7. Education is the great American adventure, the world's most colossal democratic experiment.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#8. I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing ... Though I hadn't a penny left, I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#9. From the first, I made my learning, what little it was, useful every way I could.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#10. Greatness is largely a social accident, and almost always socially supported.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#11. For I am my mother's daughter, and ...

Mary McLeod Bethune

#12. For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#13. Knowledge is the prime need of the hour.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#14. One is reminded how often avant-gardism is a more polite label for the concerns of angry young men, sometimes graying young men.

Mary McLeod

#15. You white folks have long been eating the white meat of the chicken. We Negroes are now ready for some of the white meat instead of the dark meat.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#16. I have had more than half a century of such happiness. A great deal of worry and sorrow, too, but never a worry or a sorrow that was not offset by a purple iris, a lark, a bluebird, or a dewy morning glory.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#17. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds

Mary McLeod Bethune

#18. [To the patronizing train conductor who had twice said, 'Auntie, give me your ticket':] Which of my sister's sons are you?

Mary McLeod Bethune

#19. We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#20. Our children must never lose their zeal for
building a better world.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#21. A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her own destiny, if she prizes her individuality and puts no boundaries on her hopes for tomorrow.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#22. If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#23. To those of you with your years of service still ahead, the challenge is yours. Stop doubting yourselves. Have the courage to make up your minds and hold your decisions. Refuse to be BOUGHT for a nickel, or a million dollars, or a job!

Mary McLeod Bethune

#24. Cease to be a drudge. Seek to be an artist.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#25. The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#26. Enter to learn; depart to serve.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#27. Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#28. There is a place in God's sun for the youth "farthest down" who has the vision, the determination, and the courage to reach it.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#29. Whatever the white man has done, we have done, and often better.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#30. The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#31. Forgiving is not about forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt

Mary McLeod Bethune

#32. I thought, maybe the difference between white folks and colored is just this matter of reading and writing. I made up my mind I would know my letters.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#33. Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#34. Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#35. Believe in yourself, learn, and never stop wanting to build a better world.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#36. If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#37. The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#38. The progress of the world will call for the best that all of us have to give.

Mary McLeod Bethune