Men very seldom change, try though we will, beneath the shifts of exterior doctrine, our hearts so often remain what they were.

We are all addicts in various stages of degradation where I live on the Upper West Side, some to heroin, some to small dogs, and some to the New York Times. The heroin is cut, the dogs are paranoid, and the Times cheats by skimping on the West Coast ball scores. No matter, each of us goes upon the street solely in pursuit of his own particular curse.

A revolution requires of its leaders a record of unbroken infallibility; if they do not possess it, they are expected to invent it.

It is a measure of the Negro's circumstance that, in America, the smallest things usually take him so very long, and that, by the time he wins them, they are no longer little things: they are miracles.

No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.

It is not the least of a martyr's scourges to be canonized by the persons who burned him.

Any experience deeply felt makes some men better and some men worse. When it has ended, they share nothing but the recollection of a commitment in which each was tested and to some degree found wanting. [...] The consequences of the journey change the voyager so much more than the embarking or the arrival.