united-states

I am groping about through this American forest of prejudice and proscription, determined to find some form of civilization where all men will be accepted for what they are worth.

A single word indicative of doubt, that any thing, or every thing, in that country is not the very best in the world, produces an effect which must be seen and felt to be understood. If the citizens of the United States were indeed the devoted patriots they call themselves, they would surely not thus encrust themselves in the hard, dry, stubborn persuasion, that they are the first and best of the human race, that nothing is to be learnt, but what they are able to teach, and that nothing is worth having, which they do not possess.

His frustration with some Americans was like that of a disappointed parent. He was so content in this country, so impressed with and loving of its opportunities, but then why, sometimes, did Americans fall short of their best selves?

Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe...the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness

An institution rooted in slavery cannot be the voice of our people.

I__ dying twice as fastas any other Americanbetween eighteen and thirty-fiveThis disturbs me,but I try not to show it in public.

If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.

People came here for a reason, to follow their conscience, to be free!

To be black in America is a wild and endless assault on the senses. You can spend every day fighting off your spiritual and intellectual extinction.

The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best of not earning their daily bread the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans even after so many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion.

The United States was a big country where everybody wore funny t-shirts and ate too much.

[I am] someone who represents a very complex country which insists on being simple-minded. And simplicity, it occurs to me, it has occurred to me more than once, in my somewhat stormy life, simplicity is taken to be a great American virtue, along with sincerity. And the result of this is, if you are simple-minded enough, you can become__ didn__ want to go that far [laughs]. And as long as you__e sincere in what you say, you haven__ got to know what you__e talking about. These are the American virtues__wo of them anyway. One of the results of this is that immaturity is taken to be a virtue too.

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved.

Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.

We want to remember that America is at its best when it__ struggling to live up to its stated ideals.

You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country__ criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies__he sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects__re the product of democratic will. And so to challenge the police is to challenge the American people who send them into the ghettos armed with the same self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the Dream. The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.