Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
History is written by winners.
Racism and hatred are synonymous.
In the bush, trust no one you don't know.
Every death is like the burning of a library.
We all suffer. If a man's wise, he learns from it.
You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.
I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.
Brown people wouldn't speak to someone who was black.
I stand by 'Roots' as symbol of the fate of my people.
It's an hour during the week where you can just slow down.
You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.
Every time an old person dies, it's like a library burning down.
When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand.
If you go back to before mankind came out of the cave, there was hatred.
The way to succeed is never quit. Thats it. But really be humble about it.
In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.
Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.
Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
I don't know anywhere in the world where there is not racism against somebody.
The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.
When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.
Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
I am really quite proud of most of the people I " know who have "made it," who do things to help people.
The problem is to find the time to write. That's why I go to sea. I couldn't be happier than when at sea.
In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.
Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.
The anti-blackness has generated new forms of youth involvement in anti-whiteness, which in some cases is appalling.
Most of the things that are asked of me as a representative black person, would suggest never are we equal Americans.
Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known.
I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.
Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.
I know that statistically, it has been proven that there is a tremendous amount of black on black crime within the inner cities.
Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.
If somebody comes up and says something good about you, that is never taken as an adhesive thing like something negative about you.
Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.
But then, as far as I know, as far as I've studied or heard or picked up, it seems that this type of thing is a curse against mankind.
I think from what I personally know, I am really quite proud of most of the people I know who have 'made it,' who do things to help people.
My own perception of Malcolm was one of something that bordered on fascination because I was looking at him and reacting to him as a subject.
We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.
There was a great deal of inbreeding between the Indians and the slaves. Genetically speaking, black people are some part black, some part European.
I get interviewed a lot, and I found myself listening to what the interviewer is asking me, I'm analyzing what I'm being asked more than my response.
Unless we learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. This is no longer merely an academic exercise, but may contain our worlds fate and our destiny.
I think most people when you say slavery tend to see a group of anonymous people pulling cotton sacks in great plantation fields, and that is largely true.
My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.
Is this how you repay my goodness--with badness?” cried the boy. “Of course,” said the crocodile out of the corner of his mouth. “That is the way of the world.
I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.
Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.