Top 99 Quotes From The Fire Next Time

Quotes From The Fire Next Time is a powerful book that explores race relations in America. Here are the top 99 quotes from the book:

1. “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time!” 2. “The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling.” 3. “I am writing this letter to you because I love you.” 4. “The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream.” 5. “If the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.” 6. “Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” 7. “The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.” 8. “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” 9. “The purpose of education…is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself.” 10. “The price of freedom is death.” 11. “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” 12. “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.” 13. “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” 14. “It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.” 15. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” 16. “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” 17. “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” 18. “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.” 19. “No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.” 20. “The paradox of education is precisely this: that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” 21. “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” 22. “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” 23. “If I were a Negro in America, I would be tempted to despair. But there is something in the American dream, the desire for freedom, the desire for equality, the desire for the brotherhood of man, that has made the Negro believe that he will be free.” 24. “I love you more than words could ever begin to express.” 25. “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” 26. “I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive.” 27. “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” 28. “All I know is that I am impelled to try to understand America.” 29. “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.” 30. “I am not a ward of America.” 31. “The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.” 32. “I am not a nigger. I am a man.” 33. “The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can.” 34. “All good art is political.” 35. “If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.” 36. “The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.” 37. “People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.” 38. “The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off.” 39. “I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.” 40. “It is not a romantic matter. It is the unutterable truth: all men are brothers.” 41. “The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.” 42. “The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible.” 43. “The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.” 44. “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.” 45. “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.” 46. “The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.” 47. “I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive.” 48. “The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.” 49. “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.” 50. “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” 51. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” 52. “People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.” 53. “It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own.” 54. “The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” 55. “In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.” 56. “If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most!” 57. “One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man.” 58. “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” 59. “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” 60. “There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.” 61. “Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.” 62. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” 63. “Why I was born I don’t know why. Maybe I was born to write.” 64. “Not only is innocence not a virtue, it is a dangerous state of affairs.” 65. “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” 66. “If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne.” 67. “The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.” 68. “The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.” 69. “There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.” 70. “All good art is political.” 71. “It