To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that is has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all.

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.

To be a gentleman is to be oneself, all of a seam, on camera and off.

America... an economic system prouder of the distribution of its products than of the products themselves.

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

A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things.

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.