Quotes About Belief

p. 92) I know my robe's going to fit me well. I tried it on at the gates of Hell.

White America remains unable to believe that black America's grievances are real; they are unable to believe this because they cannot face what this fact says about themselves and their country; and the effect of this massive and hostile incomprehension is to increase the danger in which all black people live here, especially the young.

Most Negroes cannot risk assuming that the humanity of white people is more real to them than their color. And this leads, imperceptibly but inevitably, to a state of mind in which, having long ago learned to expect the worst, one finds it very easy to believe the worst.

You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger.

It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being– and let us not ask whether or not this is possible, I think we must believe that it is possible– must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity, or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.

the myth of the happy darky and Gone With the Wind. And the North Americans appear to believe these legends, which they have created and which absolutely nothing in reality corroborates, until today. And when these legends are attacked, as is happening now—all over a globe which has never been and never will be White—my countrymen become childishly vindictive and unutterably dangerous.

I have seen and heard and endured the secrets of desperate white men and women, which they knew were safe with me, because even if I should speak, no one would believe me.

really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended, and salvation stopped at the church door. When we were told to love everybody, I had thought that that meant everybody. But no. It applied only to those who believed as we did, and it did not apply to white people at all.

Take no one's word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.

Take no one's word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there really is no limit to where you can go.

Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.

Because even if I should speak, no one would believe me. And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that what I said was true.

It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I

The principles were Blindness, Loneliness, and Terror, the first principle necessarily and actively cultivated in order to deny the two others. I would love to believe that the principles were Faith, Hope, and Charity, but this is clearly not so for most Christians, or for what we call the Christian world.

become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. I

It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about anything which one hasn't, by an act of the imagination, made one's own.

No,' he said, frankly, 'I don't. I don't believe all this female intuition shit. It's something women have dreamed up.' 'You can say that--and in such a tone!' she mimicked him: 'Something women have dreamed up. But I can't say that--what men have 'dreamed up' is all there is, the world they've dreamed up is the world.

The Lord had given her what she said she wanted, as was often, she had found, His bewildering method of answering prayer.

I told her that I have loved her once and I made myself believe it.

The fear that I heard in my father's voice, for example, when he realized that I really believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down

One cannot argue with anyone's experience or decision or belief.

Take no one's word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.

We will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, armies, flags nations in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me one should rejoice in the fact of death, one out to decide indeed to earn ones death by confronting with passion, the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life. It is that small beacon from that terrifying darkness from wence we come and wence we shall return.

he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him.