White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

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

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 who cling to their illusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water.

Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.