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

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

Everybody’s journey is individual.

I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.

You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.

Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.

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.

Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they’re both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.

Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it and leave the design intelligible.

History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history.

Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.

The history of every individual man should be a Bible.

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.