If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, recreated from the Bible in a song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow-sign. Not more water, the fire next time!

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

The making of an American begins at that point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Rage can only with difficulty, and never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence, and therefore is not susceptible to any arguments whatsoever.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.