“Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.”

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 deserve to be a happy person you were born to be.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

The day I was born songs were on records, phones were tied down, computers needed rooms and the web was fiction. Change the world. You can.

I want every young man who sees me to know that I’m not that different from them. I wasn’t born into wealth. I wasn’t born into fame. I made a lot of mistakes – but I kept at it.

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

Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.

We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.

No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion.