Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.