Mary McLeod Bethune

“I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another.”

“I leave you a respect for the use of power.”

“I leave you racial dignity.”

“I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men.”

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

“I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Our children must never lose their zeal for building a better world.”

“I leave you faith.”

“Cease to be a drudge. Seek to be an artist.”

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

“Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.”

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