MICHELLE ALEXANDER 1967—“The New Jim Crow”
OUR ENTIRE POLITICAL SYSTEM is financed by wealthy private interests buying politicians and making sure the rules are written ins their favor.
NO OTHER COUNTRY in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than south Africa did at the high of apartheid.
WE HAVE NOT ENDED racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.
LIKE JIM CROW (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.
THERE ARE MORE AFRICAN AMERICANS under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, then were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began.
DESMOND TUTU 1931-2021. “The Book of Joy”.
HOPE IS BEING ABLE TO SEE THAT THERE IS LIGHT DESPITE ALL OF THE DARKNESS.
I CAN’T CONTROL what happens to me, but I can control how I respond.
OUR MATURITY will be judged by how we are able to agree to disagree and yet continue to love one another, to care for one another, and cherish one another and seek the greater good of the other.
LANGUAGE IS VERY POWERFUL. LANGUAGE DOES NOT JUST DESCRIBE REALITY. LANGUAGE CREATES THE REALITY IT DESCRIBES.
IF you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
IT IS OUR MORAL OBLIGATION to give every child the very best education possible.
I HAVE BEEN to the Occupied Palestine Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.
WE ARE EACH MADE for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.
YOU DON’T CHOOSE YOUR FAMILY. They are god’s gift to you as you are to them.
AMIRI BARAKA 1934-2014. “Blues People” “Black Music”.
ART IS WHATEVER MAKES YOU PROUD TO BE HUMAN.
THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN AMERICA, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
MY RESPONSIBILITY IS TO TRUTH AND BEAUTY.
THERE IS NO DEPTH TO EDUCATION WITHOUT ART.
IN AMERICA BLACK IS A COUNTRY.
THE FUTURE IS ALWAYS HERE IN THE PAST.
HOPE IS DELICATE SUFFERING.
FROM THE SLAVE SHIP TO THE CITIZENSHIP WE FACED A LOT OF BULLSHIP.
I’D SAY I’M a revolutionary optimist. I believe that the good guys — the people are going to win.
ART IS A WEAPON IN THE STUGGLE OF IDEAS, THER CLASS STRUGGLE.
WHEN I DIE, the consciousness I carry I will to black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone.
IF YOU ARE BLACK, the only roads into the mainland of American life are through subservience, cowardice and loss of manhood. these are the white man’s roads.
SHERMAN ALEXIE 1966– “Reservation Blues” “Indian Killer”.
LIFE IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE between being an individual and being a member of the community.
I USED TO THINK the world was broken down by tribes. By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn’t true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.
WHEN YOU RESORT TO VIOLENCE to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.
IF YOU TEACH kids to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.
DON’T LIVE UP TO YOUR STEREOTYPES.
MOST OF MY HEROES ARE JUST DECENT PEOPLE. DECENCY IS RARE AND UNDERRATED.
IF ONE READS enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.
WHAT KIND OF LIFE CAN YOU HAVE IN A HOUSE WITHOUT BOOKS.
The world, EVEN THE SMALLEST PARTS OF IT, IS FILLED WITH THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW.
I GRABBED MY BOOK and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. heck, I wanted to kiss it. yes, kiss it. that’s right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that’s kind of perverted or maybe it’s just romantic and highly intelligent.
MY ONLY PURPOSE IS TO TEACH CHILDREN TO REBEL AGAINST AUTHORITY FIGURES.
HE MADE ME REALIZE that hard work — that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task — is joy.
THE BOOK BANNERS WANT TO CONTROL WHAT EVERY CHILD READS.
FUNNY HOW A LITTLE POLITENESS CAN CHANGE PEOPLE’S MINDS.
SINCE JESUS WAS HUMAN then he most assuredly farted and burped. And if God did create us in God’s image then God must fart and burp as well.
HUMOR WAS AN ANTISEPTIC that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.
THE DREAM he needed most was the dream that frightened him more.
I WRITE IN BLOOD BECAUSE I REMEMBER WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO BLEED.
EVERY MOVIE IS A ROAD MOVIE. EVERY NOVEL IS A MYSTERY. EVERY TORTILLA CHIP IS SACRED.
NIELS BOHR 1885-1962. Nobel Prize in Physics
OPPOSITES ARE NOT CONTRADICTORY BY COMPLIMENTARY.
IF QUANTUM mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.
NOTHING EXISTS UNTIL IT IS MEASURED.
EVERYTHING we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
EVERY GREAT AND DEEP DIFFICULTY bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.
AN EXPERT is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
A DEEP TRUTH IS A TRUTH THAT NOT ONLY IS IT TRUE BUT IT’S EXACT OPPOSITE IS ALSO TRUE.
PREDICTION IS VERY DIFFICULT, ESPECIALLY IF IT’S ABOUT THE FUTURE.
IN THE GREAT DRAMA of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.
A PHYSICIST IS JUST AN ATOM’S WAY OF LOOKING AT ITSELF.
NO PARADOX, NO PROGRESS.
EVERY VALUABLE HUMAN BEING must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to makes things better than they are.
NEVER EXPRESS YOURSELF MORE CLEARLY THAN YOU ARE ABLE TO THINK.
THE MEANING OF LIFE consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.
IF AN IDEA DOES NOT APPEAR BIZARRE, THERE IS NO HOPE FOR IT.
THE BEST WEAPON OF dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a Democracy should be the weapon of openness.
THERE ARE SOME THINGS SO SERIOUS YOU HAVE TO LAUGH AT THEM.
WHEN IT COMES TO ATOMS, LANGUAGE CAN BE USED ONLY AS IN POETRY.
WE ARE TRAPPED BY LANGUAGE to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.
IF WE COULDN’T LAUGH at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.