Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894–1984) was a United States minister, educator, scholar, social activist and the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia from 1940 to 1967. Mays was also a significant mentor to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and was among the most articulate and outspoken critics of segregation before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.
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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 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 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 a sin.
—Benjamin Mays
Topics: Goals, Aspirations, Tragedy, Goal, Life
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 Mays
Topics: God
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 Mays
Topics: Slavery
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