The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process

I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.

When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.

In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.

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.