Part of the core information that I’ve been purveying is that identity politics is a sick game. You don’t play racial, ethnic, and gender identity games. The Left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let’s say, and the Right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride. I think they’re equally dangerous.

I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

We have an idea that we Americans are God’s chosen people, that God loves us more than any other people, and that we are God’s blessed. I tell you that God doesn’t love us any more than He does the Russians.

If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

I’m very definitely a woman and I enjoy it.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

Mubarak was oppressing and pillaging his own people. He was an enemy to the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the war-mongering NATO group.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

I am confident my Hindutva face will be an asset when dealing with foreign affairs with other nations.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

You notice how liberals keep saying, ‚If only Islam would have a Reformation‘ – it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.

Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.

In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

If the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I’ll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I’ve always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn’t find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.