“Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.”

—  James Baldwin, book Nobody Knows My Name

Source: Nobody Knows My Name

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal." by James Baldwin?
James Baldwin photo
James Baldwin163
(1924-1987) writer from the United States 1924–1987

Related quotes

Margaret Thatcher photo

“The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. They are few in number, but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavour and, I believe, the resolve of every Member of the House.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104910 <br class="br">First term as Prime Minister

Christopher Hitchens photo

“Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

As quoted in [Values of the Wise : Aspiring to "The Life of Value", 2004, Jason, Merchey, 330]
2000s, 2004

“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal (sic) which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 292)

Amin Maalouf photo

“For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free.”

Amin Maalouf book In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Source: In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Bell Hooks photo

“Nothing indicts female allegiance to patriarchy more than the willingness to behave as though the problems created by cultural investment in sexist thinking about the nature of male and female roles can be solved by women's working harder.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

Franz Kafka photo

“His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official's office.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

34
Variant translation: His exhaustion is that of the gladiator after the fight, his work was the whitewashing of one corner in a clerk’s office.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Mirkka Rekola photo

“Down the ages / they conduct their long monologue: / can'y you hear? / They hope for it from others, / wait for ones like themselves, / they were born that way. / And so has the world been arranged / that those others grow weary / and begin to take care of the chores.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

“Life doesn't work out the way we plan, but maybe it works out the way it's supposed to after all.”

Kristin Harmel (1979) American journalist

Source: The Sweetness of Forgetting

Isabel Quintero photo

“Living on the hyphen is a complex cultural existence at times, and we’re often pulled in many directions where allegiance is always demanded. It is a fractured state of being, though I don’t think it’s necessarily bad; at least the having multiple ways of looking at life-the Mexican and American/the male and female. Where that goes awry is when we want to make one way of approaching life, The One Way. That’s where things begin to disintegrate, loyalties are questioned, and patriarchies are born…”

Isabel Quintero

On the Mexican American experience in “2015 Morris Award: An Interview with Finalist Isabel Quintero” http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2015/01/26/morris-award-finalist-interview-isabel-quintero/ in YALSA (2015 Jan 26)

Related topics