The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.

The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

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

I must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. . . . I know the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads . . . whoever debases others is debasing himself.

I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.