I did not tell you it would be okay because I never believed it would be okay.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.

An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.

What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.

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

I did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you're swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.

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

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

[E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.

If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.

The point is, stories can be all lengths. Never underestimate the power of “less is more.

[W]hen people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest to them, and are unreserved with strangers

The Bay of Pigs became a metaphor for feckless folly and failure.

Happiness is not a goal it is a by-product.

It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue.

I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.

Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue;- All things, in short, to which belong The charm, the grace that Time makes strong, All these I prize, but (entre nous) Old friends are best!

We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.

Birds needs trees and mankind needs both of them! Protecting the nature and environment is not only a matter of ethics but also a matter of existence.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.