Diversity Quotes - Page 29

• I could never live happily in Africa-or anywhere else-until I could live freely in Mississippi.

  Alice Walker

  Justice, Live Free, Mississippi

  Alice Walker (2013). “The Alice Walker Collection: Non-Fiction”, p.74, Hachette UK

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• Let no man of us budge one step, and let slaveholders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites-we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears.

  David Walker

  Country, Men, Blood

  David Walker (1965). “David Walker's Appeal: In Four Articles, Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America”

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• The Americans say that we are ungrateful-but I ask them for heaven's sake, what should we be grateful to them for-for murdering our fathers and mothers?-Or do they wish us to return thanks to them for chaining and handcuffing us, branding us, cramming fire down our throats, or for keeping us in slavery, and beating us nearly or quite to death to make us work in ignorance and miseries, to support them and their families. They certainly think we are a gang of fools.

  David Walker

  Mother, Father, Grateful

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• The challenge of this age is to resist and conquer in each of our own beings the racist brainwashing that is still active in our minds.

  Wyatt Tee Walker

  Justice, Challenges, Mind

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• You want to hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from becoming a mere mush of good-nature.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Hate, Justice, Want

  Charles Dudley Warner (1872). “Back-log studies and My summer in a garden”, p.117

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• In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.

  Booker T. Washington

  Running, Race, Differences

  W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington (2012). “Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.137, Courier Corporation

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• The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.

  Simone Weil

  Justice, Stronger, Virtue

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.50, Routledge

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• This is called 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'; it is called the 'asylum of the oppressed,' and some have been foolish enough to call it the 'Cradle of Liberty.' If it is the 'Cradle of Liberty,' they have rocked the child to death.

  William Wells Brown

  Children, Home, Land

  William Wells Brown, Paula Garrett, Hollis Robbins (2006). “The Works of William Wells Brown: Using His "strong, Manly Voice"”, p.12, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I would have the Constitution torn in shreds and scattered to the four winds of heaven. Let us destroy the Constitution and build on its ruins the temple of liberty. I have brothers in slavery. I have seen chains placed on their limbs and beheld them captive.

  William Wells Brown

  Brother, Wind, Justice

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• Someone must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen to me to do so. The awful death roll called every week is appalling, not only because of the lives taken, the cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters.

  William Wells Brown

  Taken, Race, Justice

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• Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land."

  Cornel West

  Mean, Land, White

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• It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

  Rebecca West

  Writing, Race, History

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• Women know the damnation of charity because the habit of civilization has always been to throw them cheap alms rather than give them good wages.

  Rebecca West

  Civilization, Giving, Justice

  1912 'The Personal Service Association: Work for Idle Hands to Do', in The Clarion,13 Dec.

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• Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument.

  Rebecca West

  Mean, Fire, Justice

  Rebecca West, Jane Marcus (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, New York : Viking Press

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• As ridiculous to approve of property and let a few men have a grossly unfair share of it, as say you are all for marriage, and then let one man have all the wives.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Men, Justice, Wife

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• Truth knows no color; it appeals to intelligence.

  Ralph Wiley

  Truth, Color, Justice

  Ralph Wiley (1993). “What Black People Should Do Now: Dispatches from Near the Vanguard”, Ballantine Books

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• No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen.

  Wendell Willkie

  Men, Rights, America

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• Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Justice, Measurement, Position

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• The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon them.

  Naomi Wolf

  Broken, Justice, Female

  1990 The Beauty Myth, ch.1, 'The Beauty Myth'.

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• Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Men, Roots, Justice

  1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, pt.1, ch.1.

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• 

  Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Education, Thinking, People

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.202, Booklassic

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• Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Struggle, Justice, World

  Thoughts on the Education of Daughters "Matrimony" (1787)

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• Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Progress, Improvement

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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• It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Sorrow, Weakness

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 4 (1792)

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• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, World, Charity

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvana Tomaselli (1995). “Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints”, p.149, Cambridge University Press

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