Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
Alice WalkerRead
I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like - when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn't look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that's terrorism, too.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote addresses the profound impact of racial terrorism and oppression experienced in the South during segregation.
Alice Walker reflects on her personal experience with the brutal reality of segregation, where the threat of violence, particularly against Black men, is a constant fear. She highlights that terrorism isn't just about large-scale acts of violence but can also manifest in the daily lives of individuals who live under oppressive regimes, illustrating the emotional and psychological scars left by systemic racism.
Themes
TerrorismSegregationRacismFearOppression
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing civil rights, one might use this quote to illustrate the personal impact of systemic oppression.
More from Alice Walker
All quotes →June 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.
Alice WalkerRead
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.
Alice WalkerRead
I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.
Alice WalkerRead
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?
Alice WalkerRead
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.
Alice WalkerRead
Similar quotes
But the safety of the world, in some sense, depends on your saying no to inhumane ideas. Standing up for one's own integrity makes you no friends. It is costly. Yet defiance of the mob, in the service of that which is right, is one of the highest expressions of courage I know.
Gabrielle GiffordsRead
I don't think I'm fearless at all. I think anybody who says they're fearless doesn't last very long. I think I'm pretty cautious, actually.
Anderson CooperRead
Citizenship means standing up for everyone's right to vote.***
Barack ObamaRead
Once I came out in sports, I basically told myself, 'I'm coming out, officially. I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and tell myself that I was being true to me. I wanted to help the younger me, when I was a kid, give them somebody for them to look up to.
Brittney GrinerRead
[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Unbounded courage and compassion join'd, Tempering each other in the victor's mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete.
Joseph AddisonRead