You write in order to change the world.

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

If the word 'integration' means anything, this is what it means that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at all, nor any respect or affection for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget.

One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

No man is a devil in his own mind.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.