Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.

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 senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it's a pretty good detour. Hubert Humphrey, as quoted by Biden, p. 134

This place is Hell’s waiting room.

There is within me a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction ...

Strength lies not in defence but in attack

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I think I've always wanted to be a role model, and I think ... everyone should try to live their life like they'd like to be a role model. I think it's like the thing keeping me out of jail.

He - A.J.[Muste] never got much credit, never got much attention. For example, I wrote a biography of him and nobody ever heard of it.

My singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That's how I see my voice.

People who lie to themselves about investing are the same as overweight people who blame their genes for their obesity.

To find a good story, you’re generally going to find it in independent or lower budget movies... I wouldn’t mind doing a big budget movie if it had a great story.