I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on...By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch.

The greatest significance of the present student generation is that it is through them that the point of view of the subjugated is finally and inexorably being expressed.

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.

All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.