“We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal — all of us. You aren't very different.”

“Baby, we have no choice of what color we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here.”

“For there's a lot of masochism in the acting profession. We're willing to take a lot of punishment, but the minute we hit a little bit of success we are liable to run from it. We're frightened of it and develop all kinds of phobias as a consequence. Outsiders who don't understand think we have a chip on our shoulder, but it's not that at all. We're so used to failure, to being hurt and rebuffed, that we can easily come unhinged by success.”

“We see the infinite plain of facts, and we impose a moral interpretation upon it. And the moral interpretation is about 'what to do about what is'. That's associated both with security, because we just don't need that much complexity, and aim. So we're mobile creatures, right? We need to know where we're going, because all we're ever concerned about, roughly speaking, is where we're going. That's what we need to know. Where are we going, what are we doing, and why? And that's not the same questions as, 'What is the world made up of?' And so that's the domain of the moral, as far as I'm concerned, which is 'What are you aiming at?' That's the question of the ultimate ideal, in some sense. Even if you have trivial, little, fragmentary ideals, there's something trying to emerge out of that. It's more coherent, and more integrated, and more applicable, and more practical.”

“It's your knowledge of the past that we're concerned with. Manuscripts and all kinds of important information has been withheld from the public for so many generations that we're held back ourselves. We have to know what was tried in order to see where the race failed. We're in a very peculiar position. At one time the Rebellers had a positive plan of action. We still know what we're rebelling against, but we have no idea of what sort of civilization we want to put in place of what we have now.”

“But money or no money we're all searching for the same things aren't we It doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have. Love and happiness that's what it's all about”

“We're one but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other”

“The main thing for us to remember is that, the same crime element that white people are scared of, black people are scared of. The same crime element that white people fear, black people fear. So we defend our self from the same crime element that they are scared of, you know what I'm saying, while they are waiting for legislations to pass and everything, we're next door to the killer, we're next door to him you know. Because we up in the projects where it's 80 niggas in the building. All them killers that they letting out, they're right there in that building. Just because we're black we get along with the killers or something? We get along with rapist's because we're black and from the same hood? What is that? We need protection too.”

“We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.”

“We're a debtor nation. We owe $19 trillion. We're not going to give you any money, and you want to be nice. You don't want to put it in their face. Just say, look, we're a poor nation. We've been mismanaged, we've been misrun. We don't know what the hell we're doing, right?”