For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only...
Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is...
The standards of the civilization into which you are born are first outside of you, and by the time you get to be a man they're inside of you.
It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I'd been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
I can't believe what you say because I see what you do.
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been...
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. from Letter from a Region in My Mind
We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.
I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. from Notes of a Native Son
Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.