I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.

Love is a game in which one always cheats.

We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution. Time and time and time again$$$ the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh who$$$ since he was necessary to put the broken country together$$$ will not let them go.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble$$$ the human trouble$$$ is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives$$$ will imprison ourselves in totems$$$ taboos$$$ crosses$$$ blood sacrifices$$$ steeples$$$ mosques$$$ races$$$ armies$$$ flags$$$ nations$$$ in order to deny the fact of death$$$ which is the only fact we have.

All happiness depends on courage and work.

The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes$$$ that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen$$$ or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace$$$ that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors$$$ that American men are the world's most direct and virile$$$ that American women are pure.

To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

We're building prisons all over the world and calling them luxury condos.

The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it$$$ for that matter$$$ be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever$$$ really$$$ been present at his life.

There is an illusion about America$$$ a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don't believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it--and almost all of us have one way or another--this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it$$$ you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you though