Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

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

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

It will be hard James but you come from sturdy peasant stock men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity You come from a long line of great poets some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said "The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you James and Godspeed.

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.