Quotes About Injustice

On some nights it was best to remember the past, and not shut it in a drawer. Three hundred years ago people believed in the devil. They believed if an incident could not be explained, then the cause was something wicked, and that cause was often a woman who was said to be a witch. Women who did as they pleased, women with property, women

Women were hurt every day and kept the cause to themselves.

Life was like a book, Jet thought, but one you would never finish. You would never know how people would wind up; the good often suffered and the wicked prospered and there was no explanation for the way in which fate was meted out as there was in novels.

he thought of Jesus as a great teacher, a rebel who refused to see the poor and disenfranchised mistreated.

She raged at a world that would allow such injustice to occur. How could the rural, verdant beauty all around her be the domain of such cruelty, a place in which the larks chattered despite the dangers they faced, unable to keep silent as they sang the praises of the sky.

Women pitied her, but went on their way; they had their own troubles to attend to, and mercy was a scarce commodity.

No one can accept the indiscriminate order of cruelty.

I'm sorry this happened to you, Marie,' he said wearily. 'There's a lot of cruelty in the world.' And then he waved his hat to indicate the paths through the park and all the people on them. 'You'll be lucky if this is your worst taste of it.

The madness with which suffering was dispersed in the world defied logic.

This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering… Does not mother love belong to the 'smallest', but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?

It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness -- however temporary, however flimsy -- of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another.

She said something I couldn't make out. She spoke in a childish voice. She was complaining, the way you complain about something that isn't fair. You say over and over that something isn't fair, but in a hopeless voice, as if you don't expect the thing that isn't fair to be righted. Mean is another word to be made use of in these circumstances. It's so mean. Somebody has been so mean. (P. 294)

El Mundo me considera un Monstruo y no tengo nada en contra de eso, aunque de paso podría decir que a los que sueltan bombas o queman ciudades o matan de hambre o asesinan a cientos de miles de personas normalmente no se los considera Monstruos sino que les llueven medallas y honores, pues solo los actos contra pocas personas se consideran malos y terribles. Lo cual no es una excusa sino una simple observación.

Since then I've always thought that under rape in the dictionary it should tell the truth. It is not just forcible intercourse; rape means to inhabit and destroy everything.

I realized how subversive Ruth was then, not because she drew pictures of nude women that got misused by her peers, but because she was more talented than her teachers. She was the quietest kind of rebel. Helpless, really.

In moments like this she thought of all the little girls who grew into adulthood and old age as a sort of cipher alphabet for all those who didn't. Their lives would somehow be inextricably attached to all the girls who had been killed.

Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

Hard times' is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa's 'hard times' were made harder by them.

We'll, you know how nigger is. Can't nobody tell 'em nothing even today. Can't be rule. Every nigger you see got a kingdom in his head.

There is a special grief felt by the children and grandchildren of those who were forbidden to read, forbidden to question or to know.

Religion is an elaborate excuse for what man has done to women and to the earth

Let him hear me. If [god] ever listened to poor colored women, the world would be a different place.