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Weakness, misery, does not always elicit sympathy. Perhaps that is because the weakness reminds of what we we fear for ourselves. Or perhaps it reminds us of our own complicity in some broad crime, and more, our presumed helplessness for it to be any other way.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

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More quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Something more awful than all our African ancestors is rising with the seas.

Between the World and Me (2015)

The hammer of criminal justice is the preferred tool of a society that has run out of ideas.

The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.

Between the World and Me (2015)

You actually can’t understand American history without understanding slavery.

Some part of us believes in nonviolence not as an ideal worth striving for, but as a fairy tale passed on to the politically weak.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ta-Nehisi Coates (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.