If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.

The fear and apathy which had for so long cast a shadow on the life of the Negro community were gradually fading before a new spirit of courage and self respect. ... The longings and aspirations of nearly 50,000 people, tired people who had come to see that it is ultimately more honorable to walk the streets in dignity than to ride the buses in humilation.

I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

I endeavoured to cheer and amuse her by reminiscences of my adventures in Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at our situation, and so curious as to our destination, that my stories were slightly involved. To this day she declares that I told her one moving anecdote as to how a musket looked into my tent at the dead of night, and how I fired a double-barrelled tiger cub at it.

Our father would never tell us what it was he feared, but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden legs.

He who is without hope is also without fear. - On Psychology

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

There is a timbre of voice that comes from not being heard and knowing / you are not being heard / noticed only by others / not heard for the same reason.

The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less I am afraid...

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.