Patricia J. Williams Quotes

• the solution to racism lies in our ability to see its ubiquity but not to concede its inevitability. It lies in the collective and institutional power to make change, at least as much as with the individual will to change. It also lies in the absolute moral imperative to break the childish, deadly circularity of centuries of blindness to the shimmering brilliance of our common, ordinary humanity.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Lying, Ubiquity, Racism

  Patricia J. Williams (2016). “Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race”, p.68, Macmillan

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• the very notion of blindness about color constitutes an ideological confusion at best, and denial at its very worst.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Color, Racism, Confusion

  Patricia J. Williams (2016). “Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race”, p.4, Macmillan

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• In the law, rights are islands of empowerment. . . . Rights contain images of power, and manipulating those images, either visually or linguistically, is central in the making and maintenance of rights. In principle, therefore, the more dizzyingly diverse the images that are propagated, the more empowered we will be as a society.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Islands, Rights, Law

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• Hilary Clinton's great sin was that she left the nicely wallpapered domestic sphere with a slam of the door, took up public life on her own, leaving big feminist footprints all over the place, and without so much as an apology.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Apology, Doors, Feminist

  Patricia J. Williams (1997). “The Rooster's Egg”

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• witch-hunting misogyny is fiercely recurrent in this nation, even if its forms vary with the ages.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Hunting, Age, Witch

  Patricia J. Williams (1995). “The Rooster's Egg”, p.3, Harvard University Press

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• I have no fresh-from-the-oven mother-daughter recollections - only the daily creaking of cans being opened and the sucking sound of gelatinous vegetables splurting from their tin-encased vacuums. Her kitchen was filled with smoke and impatience. ... And so I grew up finding my own path, frying what could not be boiled, winging my way through life without recipes.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Daughter, Mother, Vegetables

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• to speak as black, female, and commercial lawyer has rendered me simultaneously universal, trendy, and marginal.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Black, Female, Lawyer

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• The polemics of right-wing radio are putting nothing less than hate onto the airwaves, into the marketplace, electing it to office, teaching it in schools, and exalting it as freedom.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Hate, Teaching, School

  Patricia J. Williams (1995). “The Rooster's Egg”, p.51, Harvard University Press

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• We humans have always needed rituals to draw like curtains over the chasms of the unknown. Without them we go mad, I think.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Thinking, Mad, Curtains

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• Viktor Frankl's timeless formula for survival. One of the classic psychiatric texts of our time, Man's Search for Meaning is a meditation on the irreducible gift of one's own counsel in the face of great suffering, as well as a reminder of the responsibility each of us owes in valuing the community of our humanity. There are few wiser, kinder, or more comforting challenges than Frankl's.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Responsibility, Men, Community

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• Martin Luther King's 1963 'I have a dream' speech was a thrilling milestone in the civil rights movement, so enduring that we tend to attribute its searing power to a kind of magic. But Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on its significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes--the thought and preparation, vision and revision--whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Dream, Kings, Rights

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• Within the world of TV land, into which American life has been reduced as well as reproduced, the phenomenon of the talk show has emerged as a genre located somewhere on the spectrum between coffee klatch and town meeting, or perhaps between the psychiatrist's couch and the crowd scene at a bad accident.

  Patricia J. Williams

  Coffee, Land, Towns

  Patricia J. Williams (1995). “The Rooster's Egg”, p.110, Harvard University Press

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