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

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.

White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.