“Patriarchy has no gender.”

The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.

Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power – not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

The people I love, I’m committed to loving for the rest of my life.

What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.

No black woman writer in this culture can write “too much”. Indeed, no woman writer can write “too much”. No woman has ever written enough.

You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.

To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.

There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death.

Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe – not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.

When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.

To know love we have to invest time and commitment.

All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

If I really believe all lives have equal value, and if I use contraceptives, which I do, and if I’m counselling my son and my two daughters to use them, how am I not serving the women who don’t have access to the contraceptives they need?

All lives have an equal value.

One succeeds in obtaining an equivalent production at a lower price by improving the arts, trades and agriculture and by developing the physical and moral qualities of workers, farmers and craftsmen.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

Until we reach equality in education, we can’t reach equality in the larger society.

O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.