“If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb...But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself?”

“The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.”

“The impulse to dream was slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing.”

“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.”

“...the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is building its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.”

“there are times when life's ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed”

“If you posses enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find that you are not alone.”

“If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.”

“Richard Wright, a Mississippi-born negro, has written a blinding and corrosive study in hate. It is a novel entitled "Native Son".”

“Every man, it seems, interprets the world in the light of his habits and desires”

“Hate yearned to destroy and sought to forget, but love could not. Love strove creatively towards days that had yet to come.”