618 Quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates
"I wanted to pursue things, to know things, but I could not match the means of knowing that came naturally to me with the expectations of professors. The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom."
"The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself."
"Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another."
"Je savais que ces théories, même relayées par des Noirs, justifiaient la multiplication des prisons, la création des ghettos et des cités, minimisaient l'importance de la destruction du corps noir devant les exigences du maintien de l'ordre. Selon ces théories, la "sécurité" était une valeur supérieure à la justice, peut être même la valeur ultime."
"Remember your name. Remember that you and I are brothers, are the children of trans-Atlantic rape. Remember the broader consciousness that comes with that. Remember that this consciousness can never ultimately be racial; it must be cosmic"
"The universe was playing with loaded dice, which insured an excess of cowards in our ranks."
"I sought a world where peasants and kings were as brothers. But what new world was ever made without the sword?"
"I found that the same softness which once made me a target now compelled people to trust me with their stories."
"Dad had turned conservative, but not in the way of the demonologists who sold us out for tenure and crumbs. More like a man who spurns the false talk of revolution for the humbler mission of resurrecting one soul at a time."