Quotes by Peter Abrahams - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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To get where you want to go, you can't only do what you like.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
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Joseph and his mother come from the black kings who were before the white man.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Man Black White
Joseph
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Mom had the kind of love for her that you could feel, like it was part of the atmosphere
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Mom
Atmosphere
Mother
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What do you get out of hating people, out of having this bitterness in your heart always?
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Hate
Heart
People
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Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it in South Africa.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Colour
South Africa
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Many have changed so much that they have lost the magic of the dream that carried them on their own bootstraps.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Dream
Bootstraps
Changed
Lost Friendship
Magic
Carried
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To get from people you had to give a piece of yourself, a real piece that mattered. Just being nice was not enough.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Nice
People
Real
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The words dripped on my consciousness, sank into my being, and carried me away to the magic long ago of once upon a time.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Time
Long Ago
Magic
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They say life is all about connecting, like that's a good thing. But when brain and eyes are lining up you know different.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Brain
Different
Eye
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My mother went to work in the homes of white folk, usually living in and looking after their children. The money was small.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Folk
Homes
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All my life had been dominated by a sign, often invisible but no less real for that, which said: 'Reserved for Europeans Only.'
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Invisible
Reserved
Life My Life Real
All My Life
Dominated
Europeans
Sign
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You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Badness
Good Person
Shows
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In the Caribbean islands, especially in Jamaica, have I found a country similar to South Africa plus the racial freedom I had sought so long.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Caribbean
Islands
Jamaica
Plus
South Africa
Africa
Racial
Similar
Sought
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Positive social awareness among the South African educated half-caste is zero. Teaching is a mechanical job. The best way of earning a living.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Zero
Best Way
Earning
African
Mechanical
South African
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To have the ability to destroy all and not to do it was one of the hard tests humanity passed - but only just - in the middle of the twentieth century.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Tests
Twentieth Century
Destroy
Passed
Twentieth
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My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Black And White
Contact
African
By-Product
Cape
Coloured
Member
South African
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With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Dream
Book
Born
Consciousness
New World
Self
Standards
Books
Desired
Set
Terms
Shakespeare
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There is a qualitative difference between being a minority and being a majority. Majorities are stronger under psychological pressure because numbers count. But only if they are aware of it.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Majority
Numbers
Psychological
Qualitative
Stronger
Count
Minority
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The familiar mood that awaits the sensitive young who are poor and dispossessed is a mood of sharp and painful inferiority, of violently angry tensions, of desperate and overwhelming longings.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Angry
Desperate
Familiar
Inferiority
Mood
Overwhelming
Sensitive
Awaits
Dispossessed
Sharp
Tensions
Violently
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I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Colour
Men And Women
Men Women World
Women Men World
Marked
Nationalist
Shelf
Writings
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You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion, but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Alone
History
Men
Alone Man
Culture
Given
Illusion
Made
People
Values
Alone History Man
Man
Each
Each Man
Walk
His
None
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Most of the black women who lived in the lower end of Vrededorp came from the countryside and were there to be near their menfolk who worked in the mines. They spoke neither English nor Afrikaans.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Countryside
Mines
Near
Neither
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We do not ask the right questions when we are young, so we miss the important answers. Now it is too late to ask, too late for the illuminating answers, and the unanswered questions haunt us for a lifetime.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Answers
Illuminating
Late
Lifetime
Right Questions
Too Late
Unanswered
Miss
Haunt
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Tribal man is not an individual in the western sense. Psychologically and emotionally, he is the present living personification of a number of forces, among the most important of which are the ancestral dead.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Personification
Western
Ancestral
Emotionally
Forces
Psychologically
Tribal
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Marxism, communism, socialism - the ideologies - did not have the automatic answers to the problem of the relations between the lighter and darker races of mankind. They did not even have an answer to anti-Semitism.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Answers
Anti Semitism
Communism
Mankind
Socialism
Automatic
Darker
Ideologies
Lighter
Races
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In East, South and Central Africa, the minority manipulated the majority into believing the minority was the majority, that there were more whites in the world than blacks; instilled in the blacks a sense of inferiority, inadequacy, worthlessness.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
East
Inadequacy
Inferiority
Majority
Worthlessness
Believing
Blacks
Central
Instilled
Manipulated
Minority
Whites
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The racism of the Nazis threatened to make whatever we had experienced look like child's play. If they could be so brutal to the Jews, what would they do to the blacks? So large numbers of black young men and women rallied to the defence of the empire.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Brutal
Defence
Large Numbers
Men And Women
Numbers
Racism
Threatened
Men Women Look
Blacks
Empire
Experienced
Women Men Look
Jews
Young Men
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Must simplicity and humanity go under in the interest of progress? What is the most important component of civilization - is it human or mechanical? Must thought processes become involved and insincere? Must the class-struggle warp those who are involved in it?
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Insincere
Warp
Component
Mechanical
Processes
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The only places where I have found that simple human dignity, that respect for the other man, and the gracious feel of tolerance and humanity have not been either among the heroes of the class-struggle or the 'thinking men' but among my simple 'backward' people.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Dignity
Gracious
Human Dignity
Tolerance
Backward
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To live with the conscious knowledge of the shadow of uncertainty, with the knowledge that disaster or tragedy could strike at any time; to be afraid and to know and acknowledge your fear, and still to live creatively and with unstinting love: that is to live with grace.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Inspiring
Grace
Shadow
Tragedy
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A man can submit today in order to resist tomorrow. My submission had been such. And because I had not been free to show my real feeling, to voice my true thoughts, my submission had bred bitterness and anger. And there were nearly ten million others who had submitted with equal anger and bitterness.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Anger
Bitterness
Submission
Submit
Tomorrow
Today Man Tomorrow
Bred
Nearly
Resist
Real Feeling
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I attended school regularly for three years. I learned to read and write. 'Lamb's Tales' from Shakespeare was my favourite reading matter. I stole, by finding, Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury.' These two books, and the 'Everyman' edition of John Keats, were my proudest and dearest possessions, my greatest wealth.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Everyman
Favourite
Golden
Tales
Treasury
Wealth
Attended
Dearest
Edition
Finding
John
Lamb
Possessions
Proudest
Regularly
Shakespeare
Stole
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Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Accepted
Citizenship
Commonwealth
Entitled
Membership
No Problem
South Africa
Automatically
Conferred
Empire
Union
Services
Speaking
Status
Trade Union
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For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight 'all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad' attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gestures of even my friends among the whites were suspect, so I had to go or be forever lost.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Gestures
South Africa
Africa
Meeting
Reached
Suspect
Whites
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The London I entered was a great bustling metropolitan city at war, an imperial power fighting to hold on to that empire. And the teeming colonial subjects of that empire did not, on the whole, want England to lose that war, but they also did not want the empire to emerge unchanged from it. This, for very many of us, was the hard dilemma.
Peter Abrahams / Novelist
Dilemma
England
Fighting
London
Metropolitan
Subjects
War Power Great
Colonial
Emerge
Entered
Hold
Imperial
Teeming
Unchanged
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