You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay it.

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.

Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.