Quotes from E.R. Braithwaite

All the big talk of Democracy and Human Rights seemed as spurious as the glib guarantees with which some manufacturers underwrite their products in the confident hope that they will never be challenged. The Briton at home takes no responsibility for the protestations and promises made in his name by British officials overseas.

So long as we learn it doesn't matter who teaches us, does it?

There's no corporal punishment here, or any other form of punishment for that matter, and the children are encouraged to speak up for themselves. Unfortunately, they're not always particularly choosey about the things they say, and it can be rather alarming and embarrassing.

Belief in an ideal dies hard. I had believed in an ideal for all the twenty-eight years of my life – the ideal of the British way of life.

A man who is strong and tough never needs to show it in his dress or the way he cuts his hair. Toughness is a quality of the mind, like bravery or honesty or ambition; it has nothing whatever to do with muscles.

They knew that Jamaica produced sugar, rum and bananas, that Nigeria produced cocoa, and that British Guiana had large natural resources; but these names, though as familiar as the products with which they were associated, were of places far away, and no one seemed really interested in knowing anything about the peoples who lived there or their struggles towards political and economic betterment.

Teaching is like having a bank account. You can happily draw on it while it is well supplied with new funds; otherwise you're in difficulties. Every teacher should have a fund of ready information on which to draw; he should keep that fund supplied regularly by new experiences, new thoughts and discoveries, by reading and moving around among people from whom he can acquire such things.

They both professed to be atheists, but, judging by their conduct, they exhibited in their daily lives all those attributes which are fundamental to real, active Christianity. They were thoughtful for my comfort in every way, and shared many of my interests and pursuits with a zest which might well have been envied by much younger people. Together we went down to Torquay for a two-week holiday and returned to Brentwood completely refreshed.

Today I was a teacher, employed. True, I was also a teacher untried, but that could also be an advantage. I would learn, by God I'd learn. Nothing was going to stop me.

Oh God, forgive me for the hateful thoughts, because I love them, these brutal, disarming bastards, I love them …

Instead, we try to give them affection, confidence and guidance, more or less in that order, because experience has shown us that those are their most immediate needs.

The betrayal I now felt was greater because it had been perpetrated with the greatest of charm and courtesy.

It was like a disease, and these children whom I loved without caring about their skins or their backgrounds, they were tainted with the hateful virus which attacked their vision, distorting everything that was not white or English.

Don't fall into the habit of bringing work home, Rick. It indicates a lack of planning, and you would eventually find yourself stuck indoors every night. Teaching is like having a bank account. You can happily draw on it while it is well supplied with new funds; otherwise you're in difficulties. "Every

They reminded me somehow of the peasants in a book by Steinbeck: they were of the city, but they dressed like peasants, they looked like peasants, and they talked like peasants. Their cows were motor-driven milk floats; their tools were mop and pail and kneeling pad; their farms a forest of steel and concrete. In spite of the hairgrips and headscarves, they had their own kind of dignity. They

Rose shifted her shopping bag off her lap and with a grunt levered her ponderous body upright; she smiled broadly at me, and with a cheery "Ta Gert, ta girls," she waddled towards the exit while I eased my shoulders in relief from the confining pressure of her body. God, what a huge woman.

was like a disease, and these children whom I loved without caring about their skins or their backgrounds, they were tainted with the hateful virus which attacked their vision, distorting everything that was not white or English. I

It is our duty to rebel. Not to destroy, but to build upon the grounds laid before us.

am a Negro, and what had happened to me at that interview constituted, to my mind, a betrayal of faith. I had believed in freedom, in the freedom to live in the kind of dwelling I wanted, providing I was able and willing to pay the price; and in the freedom to work at the kind of profession for which I was qualified, without reference to my racial or religious origins.

realized at that moment that I was British, but evidently not a Briton, and that fine differentiation was now very important; I

A child who has slept all night in a stuffy, overcrowded room, and then breakfasts on a cup of weak tea and a piece of bread, can hardly be expected to show a sharp, sustained interest in the abstractions of arithmetic, and the unrelated niceties of correct spelling. Punishment (or the threat of it) for this lack of interest is unlikely to bring the best out of him.

He further advised me to live like a man, with dignity and not let the colour of my skin cripple my spiritual growth or social consciousness. And he told me then that our shoutings against prejudice and discrimination would be empty and meaningless until, inside ourselves, we admitted no difference between men, any men, based on the colour of their skins.