A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.

I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive.

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.

The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.