Skip to content

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.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me (2015)

Another quote →

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.

All Ta-Nehisi Coates quotes →

Attribution

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.