The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

No man is a devil in his own mind.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life -- without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.

Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.