It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

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.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Yr crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put it on yr head

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.

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.