“Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.”

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.

Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.

Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

Literature is indispensable to the world.

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

The perils of overwork are slight compared with the dangers of inactivity.

She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.