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Journalists claim to be hearing "both sides" as though a binary opposition had been set down by some disinterested god. But it is the journalists themselves who are playing god -- it is the journalists who decide which sides are legitimate and which are not, which views shall be considered and which pushed out of the frame. And this power is an extension of the power of other curators of the culture -- network execs, producers, publishers -- whose core job is deciding which stories get told and which do not.

— The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Page 120)

"Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others," writes Edward Said. That its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.

— The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Page 115)

But I think many of us who are teachers and professors have forgotten that the syllabus serves the student, and all around us are teachers, administrators, and columnists who seem to believe that material should be hard for the sake of it and that education itself is best when rendered not in wonder but in force.

— The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Page 73)