The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

Youth must be the worst time in anybody's life. Everything's happening for the first time, which means that sorrow, then, lasts forever. Later, you can see that there was something very beautiful in it. That's because you ain't got to go through it no more.

History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.

If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.