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

The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.

When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.

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.

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

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.

You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other – our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That’s to help each other, not hurt each other.

Time is truly the great enemy. It’s not the great healer, it’s the great stealer.

Friends show me what I can do, foes teach me what I should do.

As freely as the firmament embraces the world, or the sun pours forth impartially his beams, so mercy must encircle both friend and foe.

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

The idea is that that there is no such thing as an external enemy.