“ Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black. ”

“ Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? ”

“ People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. ”

“ I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. ”

“ I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all. ”

“ There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment the time is always now. ”

“ It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. ”

“ The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever. ”

“ The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. ”

“ To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread. ”