Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

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

... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.