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.

In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle.

The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.