"The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass."

"I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish."

"Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion."

"The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior."

"People tend not to use this word beauty because it's not intellectual - but there has to be an overlap between beauty and intellect."

"My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969."

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

"If we had in this room a hundred teachers, good teachers from good schools, and asked them to define the word education, there would be very little general agreement."