618 Quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport."

"In 2001, the Associated Press published a three-part investigation into the theft of black-owned land stretching back to the antebellum period. The series documented some 406 victims and 24,000 acres of land values at tends of millions of dollars. The land was taken through means ranging from legal chicanery to terrorism."

"In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy."

"Between 1882 and 1968, more black people were lynched in MIssissippi than in any other state."

"[Clyde Ross] was stationed in California. He found that he could go into stores without being bothered. He could walk the streets without being harassed. He could go into a restaurant and receive service."

"We were coloreds or Negroes, and to call someone black was to invite a fistfight. But Malcolm remade the menace inherent in that name into something mystical--Black Power; Black Is Beautiful; It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand."

"Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing--myself."

"Dylan's voice was awful, an aged quaver that sounded nothing like the deep-throated or silky R&B that Dad took as gospel. But the lyrics wore him down, until he played Dylan in that addicted manner of college kids who cordon off portions of their lives to decipher the prophecies of their favorite band. Dad heard poetry, but more than that an angle that confirmed what a latent part of him already suspected. This was was bullshit."

"What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through--that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it."

"La rue fait de chaque journée une suite de questions piège, et chaque réponse incorrecte peut provoquer une raclée, une balle dans la peau, une grossesse non désirée. Personne n'en sort indemne. Pourtant, la chaleur qui s dégage de ce danger permanent, de ce flirt constant avec la mort, est excitante."