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.

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.