Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women

I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.

[T]here is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture -- in front of us -- our own little mirage that we think is the future.

The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

I was born black and female.

That's what being eccentric means--being natural.

When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven.