Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore

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.

You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

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

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

I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.