“When youre sharing a foxhole with another man, you don't worry about what color he is, just whether or not he will protect your back”

“History never repeats itself, historians do.”

“So attitude is something we should constantly do an internal check-up on--and make adjustments. The beautiful thing about an attitude change can be likened to the words 'Cut!"and 'Action!'. If the take was horrible, a new reality can begin with the next take when they call "Action!' just moments later.""...if you realize that you cannot change your attitude--if you come to the conclusion you don't even care if you change your attitude--if you find yourself unable to jump-start any change in your attitude, you've got a serious problem and you should seek help.”

“He looked sharply towards the pollarded trees. 'Yes, just there,' he said. 'I saw it plainly, and equally plainly I saw it not. And then there's that telephone of yours.' I told him now about the ladder I had seen below the tree where he saw the dangling rope. 'Interesting,' he said, 'because it's so silly and unexpected. It is really tragic that I should be called away just now, for it looks as if the - well, the matter were coming out of the darkness into a shaft of light. But I'll be back, I hope, in thirty-six hours. Meantime, do observe very carefully, and whatever you do, don't make a theory. Darwin says somewhere that you can't observe without theory, but to make a theory is a great danger to an observer. It can't help influencing your imagination; you tend to see or hear what falls in with your hypothesis. So just observe; be as mechanical as a phonograph and a photographic lens.'Presently the dog-cart arrived and I went down to the gate with him.'Whatever it is that is coming through, is coming through in bits,' he said. 'You heard a telephone; I saw a rope. We both saw a figure, but not simultaneously nor in the same place. I wish I didn't have to go.'I found myself sympathizing strongly with this wish, when after dinner I found myself with a solitary evening in front of me, and the pledge to 'observe' binding me. It was not mainly a scientific ardour that prompted this sympathy and the desire for independent combination, but, quite emphatically, fear of what might be coming out of the huge darkness which lies on all sides of human experience. I could no longer fail to connect together the fancied telephone bell, the rope, and the ladder, for what made the chain between them was the figure that both Philip and I had seen. Already my mind was seething with conjectural theory, but I would not let the ferment of it ascend to my surface consciousness; my business was not to aid but rather stifle my imagination. ("Expiation")”

“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”

“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.”

“What up Brit-Boy?""I was just wondering," he said,"about the significance of your canine collar."Why was the collar such a big deal? Back home, half the girls wore them. "It was a gift from someone with twice the cojones you have."He raised his eyebrows. "You only have the data to validate half of that statement," he said, letting his legs fall apart and glancing downward. "But that could be corrected.”