The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.

The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.

The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]