America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many.
Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death.
Why do you laugh? he said. Because at a price I now see that which I couldn’t see, I said.
Some things are just too unjust for words, and too ambiguous for either speech or ideas.
Play the game, but don’t believe in it – that much you owe yourself … Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate.
I’ve never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to justify and affirm someone’s mistaken beliefs; or when I’ve tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear.
I’m an invisible man and it placed me in a hole—or showed me the hole I was in, if you will—and I reluctantly accepted the fact.
I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied
I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied -- not even I. On the other hand, I'...
I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might rupture myself.
Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He tell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as an...
For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it,...
For the first time, as I swung along the streets, I thought consciously of how I had conducted myself at home. I hadn't worried too much about whites as people. Some were friendly and some were not, a...
During these times of indecision when all the old answers are proven false, the people look back to the dead to give them a clue, they call first upon one and then upon another of those who have acted...
As the advertising industry, which is dedicated to the creation of masks, makes clear, that which cannot gain authority from tradition may borrow it with a mask.
And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
And in order for the Negro to fulfill his duty as a citizen it was often necessary that he fight for his self-affirmed right to fight.
And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man – but too much of your life will be lost,...
Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward the walks and over the walks to the asphalt drives lined with whitewashed stones...
They could talk and agree with themselves, the world was nailed down, and they loved it. They received a feeling of security.