There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

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.

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

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