Quotes from Alex Haley

So Dad has joined the others up there. I feel that they do watch and guide, and I also feel that they join me in the hope that this story of our people can help alleviate the legacies of the fact that preponderantly the histories have been written by the winners.

All of that Hollywood stuff! Like these women wanting men to pick them up and carry them across thresholds and some of them weigh more than you do. I don't know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie and television addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husband comes in tired and sweaty from working like a dog all day, looking for some food. ~Malcolm X

Jabon Sallah

It is the way of the world that goodness is often repaid by badness.

If you're blessed to do something like 'Roots'... you find yourself immersed. You're asked to do this, to do that - all for admirable causes. But you're just swamped.

I stand by 'Roots' as symbol of the fate of my people.

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.

If somebody comes up and says something good about you, that is never taken as an adhesive thing like something negative about you.

When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

And there was a lot of exclaiming about some Massa Patrick Henry having cried out, 'Give me liberty or give me death!' Kunta liked that, but he couldn't understand how somebody white could say it; white folks looked pretty free to him.

Somehow his praying and his studying made it all right to mix with them. That way, it seemed to him he could remain himself without having to remain by himself.

Find the good—and praise it.

It is often the way of the world that goodness is often repaid with badness.

You can't be nobody's frien' an' slave both. How come, Pappy? 'Cause friend's don't own one 'nother.

He wondered if she also knew how strange and sad he found it to hear her talking--as so many others did--about 'usn's',' and acting as if se owned the plantation she lived on instead of the other way around.

Crazies always recognize each other. I think Melville said it, in a slightly different context: "Genius all over the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round." Of course, we're not talking about genius here, we're talking about crazies—but

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

I don't mind shaking hands with a human being, are you one?

I know that societies often have killed people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America, then, all credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine. - el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz

Let me tell you something: I am a man.

He thought that it was impossible for a massa to perceive that being owned by anyone could never be enjoyable.

only guilt admitted accepts truth.

Fact, I specks his mammy hatched him!