“(After I had outlived the shocks of childhood, after the habit of reflection had been born in me, I used to mull over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow our memories, how lacking we were in those intangible sentiments that bind man to man, and how shallow was even our despair. After I had learned other ways of life I used to brood upon the unconscious irony of those who felt that Negroes led so passional an existence! I saw that what had been taken for our emotional strength was our negative confusions, our flights, our fears, our frenzy under pressure”
Black Boy (1945)
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Richard Wright 130
African-American writer 1908–1960Related quotes

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?”
Source: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

To W. Lutoslawski (6 May 1906)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)
Context: Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

Child star Donnie Dunagan, aka voice of 'Bambi,' wasn't afraid to face Frankenstein http://www.nwitimes.com/entertainment/columnists/offbeat/offbeat-child-star-donnie-dunagan-aka-voice-of-bambi-wasn/article_f81013d1-e67c-587b-aecb-da893dab25c2.html (Marh 2, 2011)

“Life more often teaches us how to perfect our weaknesses than how to develop our strengths.”
Haven (1951)