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b477af0 With ever watchful eyes and bearing scars, visible and invisible, I headed North, full of a hazy notion that life could be lived with dignity, that the personalities of others should not be violated, that men should be able to confront other men without fear or shame, and that if men were lucky in their living on earth they might win some redeeming meaning for the having struggled and suffered here beneath the stars. Richard Wright
01d7877 If I should say that he is a victim of injustice, then I would be asking by implication for sympathy; and if one insists upon looking at this boy as a victim of injustice, he will be swamped by a feeling of guilt so strong as to be indistinguishable from hate. Of all things, men do not like to feel that they are guilty of wrong, and if you make them feel guilt, they will try desperately to justify it on any grounds; but, failing that, and s.. Richard Wright
fa22159 it was no longer a matter of whether I would steal or lie or murder; it was a simple, urgent matter of public pride, a matter of how much I had in common with other people. pride Richard Wright
bac1995 Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from.. prejudice human-rights institutional-abuse institutional-oppression Richard Wright
9c0bbde If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as h.. man fear philosophy culture Richard Wright
a22ebfe Slowly he lifted his hands in the darkness and held them in mid-air, the fingers spread weakly open. If he reached out with his hands, and if his hands were electric wires, and if his heart were a battery giving life and fire to those hands, and if he reached out with his hands and touched other people, reached out through these stone walls and felt other hands connected with other hearts -- if he did that, would there be a reply, a shock? Richard Wright
b832d72 If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions; but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through vi.. Richard Wright
110699b I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of "Uncle Tom's Children". When the review of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awful naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have t.. goals mistakes Richard Wright
bc16b87 Did you ever feel happy in church?" "Naw. I didn't want to. Nobody but poor folks get happy in church." "But you are poor, Bigger." Again Bigger's eyes lit with a bitter and feverish pride. "I ain't that poor." Richard Wright
7b716de If the stars twinkled more than usual on any given night, it meant that the angels in heaven were happy and were flitting across the doors of heaven; and since stars were merely holes ventilating heaven, the twinkling came from the angels flitting past the holes that admitted air into the holy home of God. Richard Wright
a7bf742 would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human Richard Wright
7b64569 The world of most men is given to them by their culture.. man world Richard Wright
fba57b0 Maybe man is nothing in particular,' Cross said gropingly. 'Maybe that's the terror of it. Man may be just anything at all. And maybe man deep down suspects this, really knows this, kind of dreams that it is true; but at the same time he does not want really to know it? May not human life on this earth be a kind of frozen fear of man at what he could possibly be? And every move he makes might not these moves be just to hide this awful fact?.. man philosophy human-nature Richard Wright
82244de Men are inventing ideas every day to justify for themselves and others their actions and needs. Richard Wright
4f595d3 And if Poe were alive, he would not have to invent horror; horror would invent him. Richard Wright
ca77a0e Having been thrust out of the world because of my race, I had accepted my destiny by not being curious about what shaped it Richard Wright
0aa92bb Every man, it seems, interprets the world in the light of his habits and desires interpretation ideas Richard Wright
cd17020 to see was not to control, that self-understanding was far short of self-mastery. He was afraid of himself. Richard Wright
a23c935 A man will seek to express his relation to the stars; but when a man's consciousness has been riveted upon obtaining a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is as important as the stars. poverty Richard Wright
7734d69 Hence, there is no such thing as an absolute objectivity of attitude. The most rigorously determined attitude of objectivity is, at best, relative. We are human; we are the slaves of our assumptions, of time and circumstance; we are the victims of our passions and illusions; and the most our critics can ask of us is this: Have you taken your passions, your illusions, your time, and your circumstance into account? Richard Wright
a385bb5 I felt that it was unfair that my lack of a few pounds of flesh should deprive me of a chance at a good job but I had long ago emotionally rejected the world in which I lived and my reaction was: Well, this is the system by which people want the world to run whether it helps them or not. To me, my losing was only another manifestation of that queer, material way of American living that computed everything in terms of the concrete: weight, c.. restrictions american-culture categorization materialism Richard Wright
9243fdd I had tasted what to me was life, and I would have more of it, somehow, someway. Richard Wright
1f7eb3d If only ten or twenty Negroes had been put into slavery, we would call it injustice, but there were hundreds of thousands of them throughout the country. If this state of affairs had lasted for two or three years, we could say that it was unjust; but it lasted for more than two hundred years. Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no .. racism-in-america Richard Wright
09f6c0e At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffer.. meaning life meaning-of-life Richard Wright
898457f They lived on the surface of their days; their smiles were surface smiles, and their tears were surface tears. Negroes lived a truer and deeper life than they, but I wished that Negroes, too, could live as thoughtlessly, serenely as they. Richard Wright
e7fb5f3 You look like an accident going somewhere to happen Richard Wright
d47ebb8 They felt that it was much easier and safer to rob their own people, for they knew that white policemen never really searched diligently for Negroes who committed crimes against other Negroes. Richard Wright
754221b Every decent man in America ought to swoon with joy for the opportunity to crush with his heel the woolly head of this black lizard, to keep him from scuttling on his belly farther over the earth and spitting forth his venom of death! fate hate scathing vengeance Richard Wright
68b8c32 Toi nong long hoc de doc tieu thuyet va toi day vo me toi de me giai thich cho toi nghia moi tu xa la toi gap, khong phai vi tu ngu co mot gia tri tu than, ma vi rang day la chia khoa cua mot the gioi than tien va cam doan. cấm-đoán giá-trị-tự-thân thần-tiên tiểu-thuyết tr67 từ-ngữ đọc Richard Wright
b00c990 I was persisting in reading my present environment in the light of my old one. adaptation defense-mechanism enculturation evolved-consciousness flinch defense evolving culture Richard Wright
dde44c7 One walks along a street and strays unknowingly from one's path; one then looks up and suddenly for those familiar landmarks of orientation, and, seeing none, one feels lost. Panic drapes the look of the world in a strangeness, and the more one stares blankly at the world, the stranger it looks, the more hideously frightening it seems. There is then born in one a wild, hot wish to project out upon the alien world the world that one is seeki.. path panic power Richard Wright
8bb6935 Nigger, you sure ought to be glad it was us you talked to that way. You're a lucky bastard, 'cause if you'd said that to some other white man, you might've been a dead nigger now." I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what was said and what left unsaid. Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I was pedaling my bicycle back t.. Richard Wright
c8bd5eb If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions, but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through vi.. revolutions corporate-america materialism Richard Wright
e9d8e3b In all my life-- though surrounded by many people-- I had not had a single satisfying, sustained relationship with another human being and, not having had any, I did not miss it. I made no demands whatever upon others. Richard Wright
de890e0 the civilization which had given birth to Bigger contained no spiritual sustenance, had created no culture which could hold and claim his allegiance and faith, had sensitized him and had left him stranded, Richard Wright
f2b58b2 They argued about the weather, sports, sex, war, race, politics, and religion; neither of them knew the subjects they debated, but it seemed that the less they knew the better the could argue. debate ignorance Richard Wright
0fb2ef5 Then, first of all, let us admit that there is no such thing as objectivity, no such objective fact as objectivity. Objectivity is a fabricated concept, a synthetic intellectual construction... Richard Wright
09b7634 I wanted to try to build a bridge of words between me and that world outside, that world which was so distant and elusive that it seemed unreal. Richard Wright
482d9ec A dread of white people now came to live permanently in my feelings and imagination. As the war drew to a close, racial conflict flared over the entire South, and though I did not witness any of it, I could not have been more thoroughly affected by it if I had participated directly in every clash. The war itself had been unreal to me, but I had grown able to respond emotionally to every hint, whisper, word, inflection, news, gossip, and rum.. Richard Wright
a6fc77d was emotionally true because I had already grown to feel that there existed men against whom I was powerless, men who could violate my life at will. I resolved that I would emulate the black woman if I were ever faced with a white mob; I would conceal a weapon, pretend that I had been crushed by the wrong done to one of my loved ones; then, just when they thought I had accepted their cruelty as the law of my life, I would let go with my gun.. Richard Wright
98506d0 the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Richard Wright
7cb17f3 I have found that to tell the truth is the hardest thing on earth. Harder than fighting in a war, harder than taking part in a revolution. "If you try it, you will find that at times sweat will break upon you. You will find that even if you succeed in discounting the attitudes of others to you and your life, you must wrestle with yourself most of all. Fight with yourself. Because there will surge up in you a strong desire to alter facts, to.. Richard Wright
821a943 Humnnn," he grunted, then laughed. "A dog bite can't hurt a nigger." "It's swelling and it hurts," I said. "If it bothers you, let me know," he said. "But I never saw a dog yet that could really hurt a nigger." He turned and walked away and the black boys gathered to watch his tall form disappear down the aisles of wet bricks. "Sonofabitch!" "He'll get his someday!" "Boy, their hearts are hard!" "Lawd, a white man'll do anything!" Richard Wright
f657b91 Hate yearned to destroy and sought to forget, but love could not. Love strove creatively towards days that had yet to come. hate love Richard Wright
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