Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

14 quotes in 262 categories

• Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others...
• I did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and…
• The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully. Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to…
• What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in…
• Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
• An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of…
• The essence of American racism is disrespect.
• I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver. I'm asking you as an American to see all of…
• Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we…
• Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon…
• You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
• What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking…
• If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
• Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?

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