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

Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.

Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.

People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe.

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.

By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.

Brokenness is a beginning.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

Purpose is when you know and understand what you were born to accomplish. Vision is when you see it in your mind and begin to imagine it