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.

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.

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.

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

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

You don't need numbers; you need passion, and this is proven by the history of the world!

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony.