The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call "now," waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.

Being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked.

It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.