Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Among the Conscious, a man is only worth his latest reading.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Donald Trump did not appear by magic.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I had no expectations of white people at all.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Racism is a physical experience.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think, as a writer, I'm in my own head.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Chaos is what we have. That is what I believe.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I have never read 'To Kill A Mockingbird.'

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“. . . there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it a such.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I don't completely understand why people in Aspen want to hear what I have to say.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann's to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I've been very, very careful to tell people what I am qualified to talk about and what I'm not qualified to talk…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's kind of selfish to say that you're only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“You have the right to every end of your exploration and no motherfucker anywhere can tell you otherwise . . .”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“but talent is nothing without a field on which to display its gifts.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“North Lawndale's Jewish People's Institute actively encouraged blacks to move into the neighborhood, seeking to make it a 'pilot community for interracial…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Donald Trump begins his political career in birtherism. That idea is connected to a very, very old notion that African-Americans are not…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think there's a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The guns seemed to address this country, which invented the streets that secured them with despotic police, in its primary language—violence.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Life is always a problem. The fact that I'm on the radio saying that I don't necessarily see hope does not relieve…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I'm always surprised. I don't know if it's my…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“It has been said that the first black presidency was mostly “symbolic,” a dismissal that deeply underestimates the power of symbols. Symbols…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Pointing to citizens who voted for both Obama and Trump does not disprove racism; it evinces it. To secure the White House,…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

The casualties in the Civil War amount to more than all other wars - all other American wars combined. More people died…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The weakness in the case for integration was that it ultimately rested on a critical mass of white people playing along, either…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver. I'm asking you as an American to…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Terrorism carried the day. Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877. The dream of Reconstruction died. For the next century, political…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Black-on-black crime’ is jargon, violence to language, which vanishes the men who engineered the covenants, who fixed the loans, who planned the…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“It is important to remember the inconsequence of one’s talent and hard work and the incredible and unmatched sway of luck and…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The civil rights generation is exiting the American stage—not in a haze of nostalgia but in a cloud of gloom, troubled by…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I don't ever want to lose sight of how short my time is here. And I don't ever want to forget that…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“From hip-hop, I drew my earliest sense of what writing should mean. Grammar was never the point. Grammar was for the schoolmen…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I drove away, as always, thinking of you. I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The irony of Barack Obama is this: He has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I watched you leap and laugh with these children you barely knew, and the wall rose in me and I felt I…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“One strain of African American thought holds that it is a violent black recklessness—the black gangster, the black rioter—that strikes the ultimate…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates