Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

I think society is both something that's very real and very powerful, but on the whole quite problematic.

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.

As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.

As there is oppression of the majority such oppression will be fought with increasing hatred.

We have a lot of societal problems that we have to fix in the 1990s.

I feel that discrimination and hierarchy is something that people have to face constantly.

It's just amazing that there are so many prejudices even now.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

All oppression creates a state of war.

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.

The victim mentality may be the last uncomplicated thing about life in America.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously, there's no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in society.

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

The only reality is our society, and I mean this seriously, Western Society is a very sick society.

Sociological critics are waste makers.

We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

Man has set man against man, Washed against unwashed.

An issue between a people and a class

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth. The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking action of dominant classes.

The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.'

It would be hard to find a single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50 percent of the vote got away with calling itself the victim... Women are the only 'oppressed' group to share the same parents as the 'oppressor'; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the 'oppressor'; to own more of the culture's luxury items than the 'oppressor'..

Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power, if history is to be trusted.