The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked p… - James Baldwin

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

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.

"Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour — and in the oddest places! — for the lack of it."

Despair is a sin. I believe that. It is easy to be bleak about the human race, but there are people who have proved to me that we can be better than we are.