If we collaborate with the powerful then our language will lose its currency as a means to tell the truth in order to change the truth. - June Jordan

And as long as we study white literature, as long as we assimilate the English language and its implicit English values, as long as we allude and defer to gods we 'neither sought nor knew,' as long as we, Black poets in America, remain the children of slavery, as long as we do not come of age and attempt, then to speak the truth of our difficult maturity in an alien place, then we will be beloved, and sheltered, and published.

I care because I want you to care about me. I care because I have become aware of my absolute dependency upon you, whoever you are, for the outcome of my social, my democratic experience.

I believe that suffering does not confer virtue upon the victim. Hence it is possible that the slave will become the slaveholder and that the victim will become the executioner.