“Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because … America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, book Between the World and Me

Source: Between the World and Me (2015), p. 8.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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writer, journalist, and educator 1975

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