Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you, and then there was after, and in this after, you were the God I’d never had. I submitted before your needs, and I knew the...

Fail in the schools and you would be suspended and sent back to those same streets, where they would take your body. And I began to see these two arms in relation—those who failed in the schools justi...

For so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bo...

For that particular community, for my community, the massage has long been clear: The Civil War is a story for white people - acted out by white people, on white people's terms - in which blacks featu...

For that particular community, for my community, the message has long been clear: The Civil War is a story for white people—acted out by white people, on white people’s terms—in which blacks feature s...

From the White House on down, the myth holds that fatherhood is the great antidote to all that ails black people. But Billy Brooks Jr. had a father. Trayvon Martin had a father. Jordan Davis had a fat...

Fully 60 percent of all young black men who drop out of high school will go to jail. This should disgrace the country. But it does not,

He is a general at war with his own army. An exhorter of radical beliefs, shrinking from their obvious conclusions. It was so much easier in the lecture hall, the salon, the seminar. When theory need...

He's screwing with you, T'Challa. I mean, I have ego, but at least my brilliance exceeds my ego. I'm happy you think so. I heard that. Yes, because I said it. I know. Next time, it'd help you at least...

Her disposition toward life was that of an elite athlete who knows the opponent is dirty and the refs are on the take, but also knows the championship is one game away. She

Her disposition toward life was that of an elite athlete who knows the opponent is dirty and the refs are on the take, but also knows the championship is one game away.

I almost never danced, as much as I wanted to. I was crippled by some childhood fear of my own body.

I also saw that those charged with analyzing the import of Obama's blackness were, in the main, working off of an old script. Obama was dubbed The new Tiger Woods of American Politics, as a man who wa...

I am Damisa-sakri. And there is no escape. Not for my enemies. Not for my people. Not for my mother. Not for me. So much rage. So much hate. I must master all of it. I must not let it master me.

I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.

I did not ask. Later I felt bad about this. I knew, even then, that whenever I nodded along in ignorance, I lost an opportunity, betrayed the wonder in me by privileging the appearance of knowing over...

I did not die in my aimless youth. I did not perish in the agony of not knowing. I was not jailed. I had proven to myself that there was another way beyond the schools and the streets. I felt myself t...

I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle...

I don't ever want to lose sight of how short my time is here. And I don't ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors,...

I drove away, as always, thinking of you. I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of you...