Benjamin E. Mays Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.

Benjamin E. Mays
In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

Benjamin E. Mays
The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.

Benjamin E. Mays
The circumference of life cannot be rightly drawn until the center is set.

Benjamin E. Mays
We, too are guilty of murder. It is time for the American people to repent and make democracy equally applicable to all Americans. What can we do? We, not the assassin, represent America at its best. We have the power—not the prejudiced assassin—to make things right.

Benjamin E. Mays
To me black power must mean hard work, trained minds, and perfected skills to perform in a competitive society.

Benjamin E. Mays
He who starts behind in the great race of life must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.

Benjamin E. Mays
If we love Martin Luther King, Jr., and respect him as this crowd surely testifies, let us see to it that he did not die in vain; let us see to it that we do not dishonor his name by trying to solve our problems through rioting in the streets. Violence was foreign to his nature.

Benjamin E. Mays
To see a mob of white men bent on lynching Negroes before one is five years old etches an impression on the mind and soul that only death can erase.

Benjamin E. Mays
He was not ahead of his time. No man is ahead of his time. Every man is within his star, each in his time. Each man must respond to the call of God in his lifetime and not in somebody else's lifetime.

Benjamin E. Mays