Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.

The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.

Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.

Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.

Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.

When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.