The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.

People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the "niggers" is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the bitterest, most terrifying kind.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.