God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.

The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.