Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
My parents taught me service - not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of learning values through actions rather than mere words, particularly within family dynamics.
Alice Walker's quote reflects the deep-rooted influence of her family culture in shaping her understanding of service. It highlights how actions within a family can impart crucial life lessons and values, emphasizing that these lessons can be more powerful than verbal instruction. Service, in this context, is portrayed as an intrinsic quality that is cultivated through lived experiences and practices observed in the family unit.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about community service, one might say, 'Like Alice Walker observed, my parents taught me service by their own actions, not just their words.'
More from Alice Walker
All quotes βJune Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.
On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.
I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.
How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?
One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.
Similar quotes
Society should see parenting as a public health issue and help parents to bring their children up feeling loved. We have birthing classes, but no parenting classes. The latter is desperately needed if we are to avoid self-destruction.
God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.
I've been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it.
The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.
Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.
Everyone has some dysfunction in their families. They have to deal with it. You don't walk away if you love someone. You help the person.