It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.
It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free.
The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.
Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.
It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.
Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.
Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.
Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.
The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.
