8 years ago in Quotes
What frightened me in your essay was the gospel of love which you begin to preach at the end. In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their warmth, and their humanity, are well-known characteristics of all oppressed people. They grow out of suffering and they are the proudest possession of all pariahs. Unfortunately, they have never survived the hour of liberation by even five minutes. Hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in the private and, as a people, only so long as you are not free.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
But we know:
Even hate against that which is low
disfigures the face.
Even anger over injustice
makes the voice coarse. Oh, we
who wanted to prepare the soil for friendliness
were unable to be friendly ourselves.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
We don't hate; we're just indifferent. Same result, less effort.
 1 decade ago in Quotes

In This Blind Alley

They smell your breath lest you have said: I love you. 
  They smell your heart; 
  These are strange times, my dear. 
They flog love 
at the roadblock. 
Let's hide love in the larder. 

In this crooked blind alley, as the chill descends 
they feed fires 
with logs of song and poetry 
Hazard not a thought: 
  These are strange times, my dear. 

The man who knocks at your door in the noon of the night 
has come to kill the light. 
  Let's hide light in the larder. 

There, butchers are posted in passageways 
with bloody chopping blocks and cleavers: 
  These are strange times, my dear. 

They chop smiles off lips, 
and songs off the mouth: 
Let's hide joy in the larder.
"In This Blind Alley"