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Communists are the last optimists.

"Ignorance is not a tragedy," said Anton, "merely an opportunity. But to know and refuse to know what you know, that is foolishness."

There are always sources of desolation that aren't taken into account because no one knows what they will be.

"We don't always get the leader that we want," said Graff. "But sometimes we get to choose among the leaders that we have."

The main reason why we're still where we are is blacks haven't united as blacks because we're told all the time to do it is to be racist.

You saved the world. All of humanity is your progeny. And yet... it is empty, isn't it? They didn't take it away from you the way they took my work from me. But time has taken it away. It's in the past, and yet you are still alive, so what is your life for?

Most important on the bearings of their life and the peace of their commonwealths, is their universal agreement in the existence of a merciful beneficent Diety, and of a future world to the duration of which a century or two are moments too brief to waste upon thoughts of fame and power and avarice; while with that agreement is combined another—viz., since they can know nothing as to the nature of that Diety beyond the fact of His supreme goodness, nor of that future world beyond the fact of its felicitous existence, so their reason forbids all angry disputes on insoluble questions. Thus they secure for that state in the bowels of the earth what no community ever secured under the light of the stars—all the blessings and consolations of a religion without any of the evils and calamities which are engendered by strife between one religion and another. (Chapter XXVI)

My friendships were not... transcendent. They were all tied to my work, and when my work went away, so did all my friends. They were not unkind, they still inquired after me, they made overtures, but there was nothing to say, our minds and our hearts did not really touch at any point. I discovered that I did not know anybody, and nobody knew me.

When the body is no longer an attraction, an expression of desire, to bare your breasts and belly is simple; you lay like dogs or cats grateful for the sun.

Our liberation cannot be divorced from black consciousness because we cannot be conscious of ourselves and at the same time remain slaves -

The will is my own. The emotion's my own. The right to be inconsolable. When I feel, there's no 'we', only 'I'.

Sentiment is for those who don't know what to do next.