Quotes from John Howard Griffin

To live in a world where men do not love, where they cheat and are callous, is to sink into a preoccupation with death, and to see the futility of anything except virtue.

Every fool in error can find a passage of scripture to back him up

Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself?

It was a little thing, but on top of the other little things, it broke something in me.

He who is less than just is less than man.

I'm annoyed by those who love mankind but are discourteous to people.

Humanity does not differ in any profound way; there are not essentially different species of human beings. If we could only put ourselves in the shoes of others to see how we would react, then we might become aware of the injustice of discrimination and the tragic inhumanity of every kind of prejudice.

Fear dims even the sunlight.

For so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man's good intentions toward his fellow man.

How can you render the duties of justice to men when they may destroy you?

for so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man's good intentions toward his fellow man.

In reality, the Us-and-Them or I-and-Thou dichotomies do not exist. There is only one universal We - one human family united by the capacity to feel compassion and to demand equal justice for all.

Didn't Shakespeare say something about 'every fool in error can find a passage of Scripture to back him up'? He knew his religious bigots.

We've reached a poor state when people are afraid that doing the decent and right thing is going to help the communist conspiracy.

Existence nullified by men; reaffirmed by nature.

I spent years," he told me, "studying the phenomenon of love." "And I spend years studying the phenomenon of justice." "At base, we spend years studying the same thing.

This system of discrimination, an inculcated double standard, may vary in content from culture to culture, but it is always unjust. There are thousands of kinds of injustice but there is only one kind of justice - equal justice for all. To call for a little more justice, or a moderately gradual sort of justice, is to call for no justice. That is a simple truth.

To live in a world where men do not love, where they cheat and are callous, is to sink into a preoccupation with death, and to see the futility of anything except virtue.

We shall remain prisoners of culture unless we become aware of the process and force ourselves to confront it and to deprogram it.

Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty

He was one of those young men who possess an impressive store of facts, but no truths.

DESEGREGATE THE BUSES WITH THIS 7 POINT PROGRAM: 1. Pray for guidance. 2. Be courteous and friendly. 3. Be neat and clean. 4. Avoid loud talk. 5. Do not argue. 6. Report incidents immediately. 7. Overcome evil with good. Sponsored by Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance Rev. A. L. Davis, Pres. Rev. J. E. Poindexter, Secretary

If virtue does not equal powers, powers will be misused.

He who is less than just is less than man.