There are people in the world for whom “coming along” is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.
We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.
I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.
Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.
The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.
People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.
People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.
To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.
And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.
The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
You’ve got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.
Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.