The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.

That a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.

I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.

In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.

Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.

... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.

The neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity -- the incredibly outgoing energy -- of righteous rage.