Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.

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 occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at all, nor any respect or affection for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget.

Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.