There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage.

Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine.

In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.

As I am a poet I express what I believe, and I fight against whatever I oppose, in poetry.

suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you - who you really are - do survive.

I believe that love is the single, true prosperity of any moment.

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.