... the constructive power of an image is not measured in terms of its truth, but of the love it inspires.

... one of the blind spots of most Negroes is their failure to realize that small overtures from whites have a large significance... I now realize that this feeling inevitably takes possession of one in the bitter struggle for equality. Indeed, I share it. Yet I wonder how we can expect total acceptance to step full grown from the womb of prejudice, with no embryo or infancy or childhood stages.

... the constructive power of an image is not measured in terms of its truth, but of the love it inspires.

The importance of a lost romantic vision should not be underestimated. In such a vision is power as well as joy. In it is meaning.Life is flat, barren, zestless, if one can find one's lost vision nowhere.

Two great areas of deafness existed in the South: White Southerners had no ears to hear that which threatened their Dream. And colored Southerners had none to hear that which could reduce their anger.

To grow is sometimes to hurt, but who would return to smallness?

When we lose love, we lose also our identification with the universe and with eternal values--an identification which alone makesit possible for us to lay our lives on the altar for what we believe.