Mary McLeod Bethune Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

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

Mary McLeod Bethune
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
The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.

Mary McLeod Bethune
Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

Mary McLeod Bethune
If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything... that smacks of discrimination or slander.

Mary McLeod Bethune
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.

Mary McLeod Bethune
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
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
When they learn of Shakespeare and Goethe, we must teach them of Pushkin and Dumas.... Whatever the white man has done, we have done, and often better.

Mary McLeod Bethune
What does the Negro want? His answer is very simple. He wants only what all other Americans want. He wants opportunity to make real what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, what the Four Freedoms establish. While he knows these ideals are open to no man completely, he wants only his equal chance to obtain them.

Mary McLeod Bethune
We must remake the world. The task is nothing less than that.

Mary McLeod Bethune
Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living.

Mary McLeod Bethune
In each experience of my life, I have had to step out of one little space of the known light, into a large area of darkness. I had to stand awhile in the darkness, and then gradually God has given me light. But not to linger in. For as soon as that light has felt familiar, then the call has always come to step out ahead again into new darkness.

Mary McLeod Bethune
Education is the great American adventure, the world's most colossal democratic experiment.

Mary McLeod Bethune
Our children must never lose their zeal for
building a better world.

Mary McLeod Bethune
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