To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.

An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa.

Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.

To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one's life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore