What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty... except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity--for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the libert...y of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a long galaxy of great women.... Those older women have gone on, and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of Godlike lambs we joy,...
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our father's knee; And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him, and he will then love me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every time I embrace a black woman I'm embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I'm hugging freedom. ...The white man forbade me to have the white woman on pain of death.... I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman in my bed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As blacks, we need not be afraid that encouraging moral development, a conscience and guilt will prevent social action. Black chil...dren without the ability to feel a normal amount of guilt will victimize their parents, relatives and community first. They are unlikely to be involved in social action to improve the black community. Their self-centered personalities will cause them to look out for themselves without concern for others, black or white.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't see black people as victims even though we are exploited. Victims are flat, one- dimensional characters, someone rolled ov...er by a steamroller so you have a cardboard person. We are far more resilient and more rounded than that. I will go on showing there's more to us than our being victimized. Victims are dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Elena de la Madriaga: Ladies and gentleman, it seems like if the only embarrassment here tonight is my presence, if the truth will... quiet your unspoken questions, I give it gladly. For five years, I was the woman of the Comanche Stone Calf. He treated me like a wife. The work was hard, the scoldings frequent. And occasionally he beat me. I did not bear him any children. I know that many of you regard me as a degraded woman. Degraded by the touch of a savage Comanche, by having had to live as one of them. You said, why did I not kill myself. I did not. Why, I, I can't. Guthrie McCabe: Well I as hell can. She didn't kill herself because her religion forbids it. You know sometimes it takes a lot more courage to live than it does to die.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Richard. Give me a calendar. Who saw the sun today?... Ratcliffe. Not I, my lord. Richard. Then he disdains to shine, for by the book He should have braved the east an hour ago. A black day will it be to somebody.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show,... Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow-- They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »