“I wish to raise a Black man who will not be destroyed by, nor settle for, those corruptions called power by the white fathers who mean his destruction as surely as they mean mine.”

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.

Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them

If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.

Divide and conquer must become define and empower.

When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn’t matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.

You need to reach down and touch the thing that’s boiling inside of you and make it somehow useful.

You cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.

A choice of pains. That’s what living was all about.

I am still learning – how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in the service of what I believe, how to accept when I fail and rejoice when I succeed.

I am still learning – how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in the service of what I believe, how to accept when I fail and rejoice when I succeed.

One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.

Oppression is as American as apple pie.

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.

People will never, ever forget what happened and how it happened, and it is my hope that we are on our way to greater change.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

Too many of us still believe our differences define us.

I have spent over half my life teaching love and brotherhood, and I feel that it is better to continue to try to teach or live equality and love than it would be to have hatred or prejudice.

People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.