Benjamin E. Mays Quotes

It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.

Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.

[H]owever hard the road, however difficult today, tomorrow things will be better. Tomorrow may not be better, but we must believe that it will be.

The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream ... 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.

It isn't more light we need, it isn't more truth, and it isn't more scientific data. It is more Christ, more courage, more spiritual insight to act on the light we have.

The tragedy of this life is not failure, but low aim.

Whatever you do,strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead and no man yet to be born could do it any better.

It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach.

Not failure, but low aim is sin.

For nearly a century, the South made itself believe that Negroes and white people were really communicating. So convinced of this were the white Southerners that they almost made the nation believe that they, and only they, knew the mind of the Southern Negro.

Honest communication is built on truth and integrity and upon respect of the one for the other.

Whatever you do, do it so well that people looking on will feel that the task was reserved especially for you by God Himself.

The creation of the spiritual was no accident. It was a creation born of necessity, so that the slave might more adequately adjust himself to the conditions of the New World.

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.

It is not your environment, it is you- the quality of your mind, the integrity of your soul and the determination of your will that will decide your future and shape your life.

The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. It's not failure but aiming too low, that is life's greatest tragedy.

If what is communicated is false, it can hardly be called communication.