“Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”
Quote collection
People Quotes — page 1030 of 5018
“All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.”
“We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.”
“Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?”
“I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.”
“The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.”
“It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.”
“I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay it.”
“People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.”
“James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.”
“People said that he was very nice, but I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people’s stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not- so grotesquely- resemble human beings.”
“It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.”
“I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.”
“I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years”
“how can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?”
“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.”
“Perhaps it would be a good idea, fantastic as it sounds, to muffle every telephone, halt every motor, and stop all activity someday to give people a chance to ponder a few minutes on what it is all about, why they are living, and what they really want.”
“It is strange how the presence of additional people can make you feel more alone.”
“Everyone's life is a mess. Everyone's. We all make mistakes . . . and not just little slip-ups. Major mistakes that hurt us and other people.”
“It hurts so good and I feel euphoric after . . . yoga people on a whole are super cool and everyone is there to work on their own thing.”