Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the "niggers" is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the bitterest, most terrifying kind.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.