Alice Walker: Quotes about people

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”

“People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

“I'm mad about the waste that happens when people who love each other can't even bring themselves to talk.”

“People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.”

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.”

“She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.”

“Surely the earth can be saved
by all the people
who insist
on love.”

“I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers…”

“I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.”

“Some people don't understand that it is the nature of the eye to have seen forever, and the nature of the mind to recall anything that was ever known.”

“And I thank God let me gain understanding enough to know love can't be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan. P.238”

“If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.”

“Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.”

“The harm that you do to others is the harm that you do to yourself and you cannot think then that you can cause wars in other parts of the world and destroy people and drone them without this having a terrible impact on your own soul and your own consciousness.”

“I felt in Georgia and on the east coast generally very squeezed. People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box or they need to label you and fix you in time and location. I feel a greater fluidity here. People are much more willing to accept that nothing is permanent, everything is changeable so there is freedom and I do need to live where I can be free.”

“I want a grown-up attitude to Cuba, for instance, a country and people I love. I want an end to the war immediately, and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the US to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. But most of all I want someone with the confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend", and this Obama has shown he can do.”

“I think Africans are very much like white people back home, in that they think they are the center of the universe and that everything that is done is done for them.”

“I think unless the people are given information about what is happening to them, they will die in ignorance. And i think that's the big sin. I mean if there is such a thing as a sin, that's it, to destroy people and not have them have a clue about how this is happening.”