25 Quotes by Chester Himes

The white folks had sure brought their white to work with them that morning.

Colored folks in Harlem didn't want to get caught by the police whether they had done anything or not.

They believed in Black Power. They’d give it a trial anyway. Everything else had failed. What did they have to lose? And they might win. Who knew? The whale swallowed Jonah. Moses split the Red Sea. Christ rose from the dead. Lincoln freed the slaves. Hitler killed six million Jews. The Africans had got to rule – in some parts of Africa, anyway. The Americans and the Russians have shot the moon. Some joker has made a plastic heart. Anything is possible.

what i really need is a dead man.

When you get to mixing sex and religion, it will make anybody crazy.

The Harlem of my books was never meant to be real; I never called it real; I just wanted to take it away from the white man if only in my books.

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.

Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal.

Our highest ambition is to be included in the stream of American life, to be permitted to "play the game" as any other American; and is opposed to anything that aids in the exclusion; the face may be Africa, but the heart has the beat of Wall Street.