Margaret Halsey Quotes

Quotes about:

• What I know about money, I learned the hard way – by having had it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Way, Knows, Hard Way

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  46 Copy quote

• The important thing about human beings is not what they do, but why they do it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Motivation, Important, Humans

  14 Copy quote

• Reality is above all else a variable, and nobody is qualified to say that he or she knows exactly what it is. As a matter of fact, with a firm enough commitment, you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before.

  Margaret Halsey

  Commitment, Reality, Variables

  Margaret Halsey (1977). “No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  17 Copy quote

• There are dozens of ways of failing to make money. It is one thing to fail to make money because your single talent happens to be a flair amounting to genius for translating the plays of Aristophanes. It is quite another thing to fail to make money because you are black, or a child, or a woman.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Play, Black

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

• I'd like somebody to breed a male, genus homo, who could go and fetch a 12" x 8" black suède purse lying in the middle of a white bedspread and not come back looking baffled and saying he couldn't find it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Lying, Men, White

  Margaret Halsey (1944). “...Some of My Best Friends are Soldiers: A Kind of Novel”

  4 Copy quote

• Democracy makes many taxing demands on its practitioners, but suspension of the intelligence is not one of them.

  Margaret Halsey

  Democracy, Demand, Suspension

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  4 Copy quote

• Success does not implant bad characteristics in people. It merely steps up the growth rate of the bad characteristics they already had.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Growth, Doe

  Margaret Halsey (1977). “No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  4 Copy quote

• The idea is that inside every human being, however unprepossessing, there is a glorious, talented, and overwhelmingly attractive personality. Nonsense. Inside each of us is a mess of unruly, primitive impulses, and these can sometimes, under the strenuous self-discipline and dedication of art, result in notable creativity.

  Margaret Halsey

  Art, Creativity, Dedication

  10 Copy quote

• The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality

  Margaret Halsey

  Mean, Reality, Ideas

  Margaret Halsey (1977). “No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  72 Copy quote

• Equality is an unconscious assumption, and if you feel you are treating someone as an equal, then you are not doing it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Equality, Assumption, Feels

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  5 Copy quote

• In practice, there is nothing especially dramatic in people getting along well together.

  Margaret Halsey

  Peace, Practice, People

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  4 Copy quote

• Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Ridiculous, Myth

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

• Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.

  Margaret Halsey

  Character, People, Littles

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  9 Copy quote

• Every time I think I've touched bottom as far as boredom is concerned, new vistas of ennui open up.

  Margaret Halsey

  Thinking, Boredom, Vistas

  Margaret Halsey (1977). “No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  9 Copy quote

• Americans (I, I'm afraid, among them) go around carelessly assuming they're tolerant the way they go around carelessly saying, 'You ought to be in pictures.' But in the clinches, they turn out to be tolerant about as often as they turn out to be Clark Gable.

  Margaret Halsey

  Tolerance, Way, Assuming

  Margaret Halsey (1944). “Some of My Best Friends are Soldiers: A Kind of Novel”, New York : Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Identity is not found, the way Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Identity is built.

  Margaret Halsey

  Daughter, Identity, Pharaohs

  40 Copy quote

• in race relations, the single gesture and the single individual are more often than not doomed to failure. Only the group and the long-term, undeviating policy make much headway. ... if you want to make the world a better place, the first thing you must accept is the fact that you cannot transcend your limitations as an individual.

  Margaret Halsey

  Race, Long, Racism

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  7 Copy quote

• ... it takes a great deal to produce ennui in an Englishman and if you do, he only takes it as convincing proof that you are well-bred.

  Margaret Halsey

  Proof, Produce, Ennui

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  4 Copy quote

• the crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o'clock.

  Margaret Halsey

  Competition, Quality, Clock

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  6 Copy quote

• One of the less dismaying aspects of race relations in the United States is that their improvement is not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. It is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.

  Margaret Halsey

  Race, Racism, People

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  4 Copy quote

• As one might expect in a society with mass communications and mass markets, the pseudo-ethic says that whatever is popular, is right. Where the traditional ethic derives its sanction from the superiority of a few, the pseudo-ethic derives its sanction from the inferiority of a great many. The pseudo-ethic is keyed, not to the spiritually gifted, but to the spiritually ungifted.

  Margaret Halsey

  Communication, Culture, Inferiority

  Margaret Halsey (1964). “The Corrupted Giant: A Speculation on American Politics and Morals”

  9 Copy quote

• The business society is interested in training its citizens to make money, and, in this objective, it is often successful. Many of them do make money, and the ones who do not obligingly regard themselves as failures who have wasted the precious gift of life.

  Margaret Halsey

  Business, Successful, Training

  8 Copy quote

• The position of children as a group, in a commercial society, is not wholly advantageous. A commercial society urges its citizens to be responsible for things, but not for people. It is the unquestioned assumption of a mercantile culture that things need and deserve attention, but that people can take care of themselves.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Business, People

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

• prejudice will always exist. So will sickness and disease, but that scarcely seems sufficient reason for telling our medical scientists to put on their hats, close up their laboratories, and give the spirochetes, bacilli and viruses a free hand.

  Margaret Halsey

  Hands, Giving, Disease

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  4 Copy quote

• democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.

  Margaret Halsey

  Hero, Democracy, Doe

  4 Copy quote

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