It does not matter that the 'intentions' of individual educators were noble. Forget about intentions. What any institution, or its agents, 'intend' for you is secondary. Our world is physical. Learn to play defense - ignore the heat and keep your eyes on the body. Very few Americans will directly proclaim that they are in favor of black people being left to the streets. But a very large number of Americans will do all they can to preserve the Dream. No one directly proclaimed that schools were designed to sanctify failure and destruction. But a great number of educators spoke of 'personal responsibility' in a country authored and sustained by a criminal irresponsibility.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I thank my mother (Ma, you're only second cause you got the dedication), who used to make me write essays whenever I got into trouble, explaining exactly what I'd done and why I'd done it.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think one has to even abandon the phrase "ally" and understand that you are not helping someone in a particular struggle; the fight is yours.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I thought of the great spectrum of The Mecca--black people from Belize, black people with Jewish mothers, black people with fathers from Bangalore, black people from Toronto and Kingston, black people who spoke Russian, who spoke Spanish, who played Mongo Santamaría, who understood mathematics and sat up in bone labs, unearthing the mysteries of the enslaved. There was more out there than I had ever hoped for, and I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to know that the world in its entirety could never be found in schools, alone, nor on the streets, alone, nor in the trophy case. I wanted you to claim the whole world, as it is. Furthermore, I wanted "Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus" to immediately be obvious to you.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

It is truly horrible to understand yourself as the essential below of your country. It breaks too much of what we would like to think about ourselves, our lives, the world we move through and the people who surround us. The struggle to understand is our only advantage over this madness.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I wanted to pursue things, to know things, but I could not match the means of knowing that came naturally to me with the expectations of professors. The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library is open, unending, free.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

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.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates