Top 30 Quotes & Sayings by Benjamin E. Mays

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American educator Benjamin E. Mays.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Benjamin Elijah Mays was an American Baptist minister and American rights leader who is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the American civil rights movement. Mays taught and mentored many influential activists, including Martin Luther King Jr, Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson, and Donn Clendenon, among others. His rhetoric and intellectual pursuits focused on Black self-determination. Mays' commitment to social justice through nonviolence and civil resistance were cultivated from his youth through the lessons imbibed from his parents and eldest sister. The peak of his public influence coincided with his nearly three-decade tenure as the sixth president of Morehouse College, a historically black institution of higher learning, in Atlanta, Georgia.

American - Educator | August 1, 1895 - 1984

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

It isn't a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.

Benjamin E. Mays

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

Benjamin E. Mays

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done.

Benjamin E. Mays

It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.

Benjamin E. Mays

The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.

Benjamin E. Mays

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

Benjamin E. Mays

Not failure, but low aim is sin.

Benjamin E. Mays

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

Benjamin E. Mays

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach

Benjamin E. Mays

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

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

Benjamin E. Mays

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

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

Benjamin E. Mays

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

Man is what his dreams are.

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

You have the ability, now apply yourself.

Benjamin E. Mays

A child must learn early to believe that she is somebody worthwhile, and that she can do many praiseworthy things.

Benjamin E. Mays

I believe everyone is born into the world to do something unique and distinctive.

Benjamin E. Mays

We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose in this battle.

Benjamin E. Mays

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.

Benjamin E. Mays

[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.

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 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.

Benjamin E. Mays

. . . the circumference of life cannot be rightly drawn until the center is set.

Benjamin E. Mays

Failure isn't in not reaching your goal but in having no goal to reach.

Benjamin E. Mays