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.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.