Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
-
One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we do start back a little ways, but if we can be twice as good, somehow we can escape history and heritage and legacy.
-
Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows - and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere.
-
I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly expressed.
-
We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me.
-
I don't completely understand why people in Aspen want to hear what I have to say.
-
I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere.
-
Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage, journalism. That was all I really wanted, and 'The Atlantic' was my first high-profile opportunity.
-
In the mid-90s The older gods were falling off. EPMD were breaking. Chuck and Flav had taken us as far as they could, and already the new voices were being hijacked by the death cults. Brothers who last week were shouting out Malcolm were flipped into studio gangsters, killing every nigger in sight.
-
As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option.
-
The only people who usually have input on my writing are my wife and my editor. I'm not in conversation with anyone except the people I report on and the people I work with.
-
Storytellers have the right to answer any question they choose.
-
I love living around black people. Home is home. We suffer under racism and the physical deprivations that come with that, but beneath that, we form cultures and traditions that are beautiful.
-
You may not be able to change the course of government, but you can achieve some peace. And books were the path to that. I grew up in a house where books were everywhere.
-
White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers.
-
I do understand how hate eats at the soul and how to purge yourself of hate.
-
Black people are pledging their fealty to the state, and yet they aren't getting the same return. This is theft. It's systemized.
-
My father was haunted. He was bad at conjuring small talk, he watched very little TV, because once Conscious, every commercial, every program must be strip-mined for its deeper meaning, until it lays bare its role in this sinister American plot.
-
Amiri Baraka went to Howard. Lucille Clifton went to Howard. Ossie Davis went to Howard. And I was aware of that when I was there. Charles Drew went to Howard. Thurgood Marshall went to the law school. Being aware of that and having all of that brought to bear, again, it's one of those things that I can't really separate from my career as a writer.
-
'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.
-
I get really, really concerned when I see somebody, taking $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, will not release what they're actually saying. That's concerning.
-
There isn't a dude outside my dad who had greater influence on my life.
-
My belief is in the chaos of the world and that you have to find your peace within the chaos and that you still have to find some sort of mission.
-
It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind.
-
Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There's cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There's an incredible amount.