"How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names."
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Alice Walker quotes (page 10 of 21)
416 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"To me war is something to be outgrown, recognized as immature, wasteful, and so destructive to life that human beings should shun it ... as they once shunned bubonic plague."
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"I personally have never trusted museums. ... It is because museums, broadly speaking, live off of the art and artifacts of others, often art and artifacts that have been obtained by dubious means. But they also manipulate whatever it is they present to the public; hence, until Judy Chicago, in the 1970s ... few women artists were hung in any major museum. Indian artists? Artifacts only, please. Black artists? Something musical, maybe? And so forth."
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"Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet."
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"Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also."
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"Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you're just going to keep buying and selling things until there's nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet."
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"We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone."
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"Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home."
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"War contributes greatly to global warming, which shouldn't surprise us. All those bombs going off, all those rockets, all those planes and helicopters. All that fuel of various kinds being used. It pollutes the air and water of this very fragile and interconnected planet."
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"I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved."
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"My heart hurt so much I can't believe it. How can it keep beating, feeling like this?"
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"The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout."
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"I think I've actually returned to a kind of realism about how the world works. That's helpful. Because in a way, no matter who's in charge of the corporation that the United States is, the direction in which it is taken seems to be inexorable. So, you just get the job of being the front man for four or eight years. Now, most people realize that's what you are."
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"I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch."
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"My writing is very organic. It's what I am. My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. So I think of it as something that's very essential to my being."
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"My ancestors make up the skin of the world. That's who that is. That's what that is. That's us."
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"For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended."
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"Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm."
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"I'm where I need to be, so my heart is light. Whatever happens, I know - I mean, I feel - that this is absolutely where I should be and I've lived up to my own expectations."
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"Just be what it is that you are, and that is just fine. You don't have to be what you're not in any way. Live that and live that fully, and that is where you discover ecstasy. You can't really have ecstasy as something other than yourself"
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