Quotes About Identity

None of my friends had grandparents like these. ... Tony and Desolina were exotic.

Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history.

The historian must have no country. —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Being in a group reveals who individuals are just as much, if not more, than being in a group alters who they are. In this way, groups can reflect some of the baser characteristics of the individuals within them as well as some of the more noble.

They came with nothing, and for a complicated set of reasons, many of them still have nothing. The slurs stick to me, standing on these graves. Rednecks . Trailer-park trash. Racists. Cannon fodder. My ancestors. My people. Me.

I just look at you and say, 'that used to be me. But it isn't anymore.

To them, joining a group and putting themselves at the mercy of someone else's collectivist judgment makes about as much sense as

O black and unknown bards of long ago,How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?How, in your darkness, did you come to knowThe power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?

It is the spirit of the South to defend everything belonging to it. The North is too cosmopolitan and tolerant for such a spirit.

As I grew older, my love for reading grew stronger. I read with studious interest everything I could find relating to colored men who had gained prominence. My heroes had been King David, then Robert the Bruce; now Frederick Douglass was enshrined in the place of honor.

It's no disgrace to be black, but it's often very inconvenient.

But the more she talked, the less was I reassured, and I stopped her by asking: "Well, mother, am I white? Are you white?" She answered tremblingly: "No, I am not white, but you—your father is one of the greatest men in the country—the best blood of the South is in you—" This suddenly opened up in my heart a fresh chasm of misgiving and fear

And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each and every colored man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man.

I can imagine no more dissatisfied human being than an educated, cultured, and refined colored man in the United States.

It's no disgrace to be black, but it's often very inconvenient.

My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education, and by tastes a white man. Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of the United States?

O black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each and every colored man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man. It is wonderful to me that the race has progressed so broadly as it has, since most of its thought and all of its activity must run through the narrow neck of this one funnel.

I felt leap within me pride that I was colored; and I began to form wild dreams of bringing glory and honor to the Negro race.

Manufacturers use names like 'Apache' and 'Cherokee' to conjure up images of the wild freebooting warrior. (Would you fly an Aborigine into battle? Drive a Swede across the desert?) In the same vein, there are still sports teams called 'the Braves' and 'the Redskins' - roughly the equivalent, as several Native Americans have pointed out, of calling a team 'the Buck Niggers' or 'the Jewboys'.

My excursions into "horse politics" and "the alphabets" were to pay my debt to society by serving in the political trenches of the equestrian world, but horse politics never defined me. It took horses to do that.

Sometimes, it is almost frightening to realise how poorly most people know themselves; it seems to put one at an almost priestly advantage over people's souls.

Met jou was ik gewoon blank, zonder jou ben ik gebroken wit.

And if it would be a restless nightingale, be a nightingale! You are a part and Reality is the Whole, So for a few days only meditate on the Whole, be the Whole! If in your heart a rose appears, be a rose!