6 quotes
Something more awful than all our African ancestors is rising with the seas.
Between the World and Me (2015)
The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.
Between the World and Me (2015)
Any claim to ourselves, to the hands that secured us, the spine that braced us, and the head that directed us, was contestable.
Between the World and Me (2015)
I've never felt the pride that is supposed to come with righteous self-defense and justified violence. Whenever it was me on top of someone, whatever my rage in the moment, afterward I always felt sick at having been lowered to the crudest form of communication.
Between the World and Me (2015)
One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard.
Between the World and Me (2015)
Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because ... America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist.
Between the World and Me (2015)