I know Why The Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

Excerpt:

Stamps, Arkansas, was Chitlin' Switch, Georgia; Hang 'em High, Alabama; Don't let the Sun Set on You Here, Nigger, Mississippi; or any other name just as descriptive. People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate.

A light shade had been pulled down between the Black community and all things white, but one could see through it enough to develop a fear-admiration-contempt for the white "things"-white folks' cars and white glistening houses and their children and their women. But above all, their wealth that allowed them to waste was the most enviable.

Although there was always generosity in the Negro neighborhood, it was indulged on pain of sacrifice. Whatever was given by Black people to other Blacks was most probably needed as desperately by the donor as by the receiver. A fact which made the giving or receiving a rich exchange.

The Essential Zen

Excerpt:

Zhaozhou asked Nanquan: what is the way?

Nanquan said: ordinary mind is the way

Zhaozhou asked: shall I try for that?

Nanquan said: if you try you'll miss it

Zhaozhou said: how do I know it's the way if I don't try?

Nanquan said: the way has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing. Knowing is an illusion; not knowing is ignorance. If you penetrate the way of no-trying, it will be wide open-empty and vast. What need is there to affirm this or deny it?

Zhaozhou was suddenly enlightened upon hearing this.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Excerpt: 'republicans and democrats'

'My wife will tell you that by nature I’m not somebody who gets real worked up about things. When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sour-pusses. When democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal.

What’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem. '