He had often thought of his loneliness, for example, as a condition which testified to his superiority.
But for power truly to feel itself menaced, it must somehow sense itself in the presence of another power – or, more accurately, an energy – which it has not known how to define and therefore does not really know how to control.
Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.
But white people seem affronted by the black distrust of white policemen, and appear to be astonished that a black man, woman, or child can have any reason to fear a white cop.
But these men are your brothers – your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.
I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it made me suffer.
The administration, increasingly, can rule only by fear: the fears of the people who elected them, and the fear that the administration can inspire.
It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being– and let us not ask whether or not this is possible, I think we must believe that it is possible– must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity, or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.
Real questions can be absurdly phrased, and probably can be answered only by the questioner, and, at that, only in time. But real questions, especially from the young, are very moving and I will always remember the faces of some of those children.
I wish I could be like Mama and say the Lord’s will be done, but I don’t know it seems to me that trouble is the one thing that never does get stopped and I don’t know what good it does to blame it on the Lord. But maybe it does some good if you believe it.
I had first been in San Francisco at the height of the civil rights movement, first on an Esquire junket, then on a lecture tour. There had been no flower children here then, only earnest, eager students anxious to know what they could “do.
The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do this if we are willing to free ourselves of the myth of America and try to find out what is really happening here.
Sometimes I think I’ll just give up. But – how do you give up?
A liar always knows he is lying, and that is why liars travel in packs: in order to be reassured that the judgment day will never come for them. They need each other for the well-being, the health, the perpetuation of their lie.
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace.
Perhaps if you can accept the pain that almost kills you, you can use it, you can become better.
You don’t know what he means by friendship but you have the feeling it may not be safe. You are afraid it may change you. What kind of friendship have you had?
It occurred to him that the question was not really what he was going to “get” but how he was to discover his possibilities and become reconciled to them.
You see, whites want black writers to mostly deliver something as if it were an official version of the black experience. But the vocabulary won’t hold it, simply. No true account, really, of black life can be held, can be contained in the American vocabulary. As it is, the only way that you can deal with it is by doing great violence to the assumptions on which the vocabulary is based.
I saw nothing very clearly but I did see this: that my life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred I carried in my own heart.