I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library is open, unending, free.

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.

Plato was a bore.

I never wanted to be rich or successful or famous. I just wanted to be happy and have fun.

Hitler's Europe Yes, welcome to Hitler's Europe... Come on, human race - for our children's sake if not our own. This is wakey, wakey time.

There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.

Stumbling upon the next great invention in an 'ah-ha!' moment is a myth.

Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!' 'Goodness had nothing to do with it'.

Reason is nothing without imagination.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

Whether you are on the Right or the Left, everyone can agree that there are a lot of outside influences in American politics that are not good for the system. There's just too much money.