I have long since passed that period when I felt personal discomfort at the sight of an ill-dressed or illiterate Negro. Social awareness has taught me where to lay the blame.
Take away the violence and who will hear the man of peace?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that without the presence of violence, the messages of those advocating for peace will resonate more strongly.
Lorraine Hansberry's quote emphasizes the idea that violence overshadows the voices of peace and reason. It implies that in a world filled with conflict, the call for harmony can often be drowned out, making it essential to reduce or eliminate violence to ensure that messages of peace are heard and effective. This reflects the delicate balance between conflict and resolution in society, highlighting the importance of creating an environment where calm and understanding can flourish.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech advocating for nonviolent approaches to conflict resolution.
More from Lorraine Hansberry
All quotes βI feel that women - without wishing to foster any strict separatist notions, homo or hetero - indeed have a need for their own publications and organizations. Our problems, our experiences as women are profoundly unique as compared to the other half of the human race.
It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively.
I am a writer. I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist - that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality.
I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and - I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.
Daddy felt that this country was hopeless in its treatment of Negroes. So he became a refugee from America. He bought a house in Polanco, a suburb of Mexico City, and we were planning to move there when he died. I was fourteen at the time.
Similar quotes
We demand a non-violent world where human security is the basis of our common global security. People have the right to live in a world where the basic needs of all peoples are addressed. No more military attacks. No more war.
This rally must send a message to the Israeli people, to the Jewish people around the world, to the many people in the Arab world, and indeed to the entire world, that the Israeli people want peace, support peace. For this, I thank you.
If you want to bring an end to long-standing conflict, you have to be prepared to compromise.
Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.
The basis for peace is respecting all creatures.
The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war.