At the rate things are going here, all of Africa will be free before we can get a lousy cup of coffee. - James Baldwin

The American revolution, the terms are these: not that I drive you out or that you drive me out, but that we come together and embrace and learn to live together. That is the only way that we can have achieved the American revolution.

Now, if we can face this, it involves facing a great many things. It demands that white people face the fact that I, for example, or any black person they will ever meet or have ever met — I am not an exotic rarity. I am not a stranger. I am none of those things. On the contrary, for all you know, for all you know, I might be your uncle, your brother, your cousin, among other things. One of the things that has happened here — and the pathology of the Deep South proves it; so does the pathology of the North, which dictates to them that they move out and I move in — among other things which have to be excavated here is the fact that this long history is also the history of a love affair.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.