Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Alex Haley

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

Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.

I think from what I personally know, I am really quite proud of most of the people I know who have 'made it,' who do things to help people.

Two years passed, and I had no second book to follow 'Roots.' Four years passed, six years. When a decade had passed without me having another book to follow 'Roots,' I was having serious private frustrations with myself.

I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.

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

My own perception of Malcolm was one of something that bordered on fascination because I was looking at him and reacting to him as a subject.

If you think about it, there's not a religious group, there's not a nationalistic group, there's not a tribe, there is no grouping of people to my knowledge, of any consequence, who have not, at one or another time, been the object of hatred, racism, or who has not had people against them just because they were them.

I know Juffure was a British trading post and my portrait of the village bears no resemblance to the way it was. But the portrait I gave was true of nearly all the other villages in Gambia. I, we, need a place called Eden. My people need Pilgrim's Rock.

My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.

A word, for example, that is negative, pejorative, and has caused more pain and suffering is 'illegitimate.' But every person has a mother and father. It is another way we let society hurt others.

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

The money I have made and will be making means nothing to me compared to the fact that about half of the black people I meet - ranging from the most sophisticated to the least sophisticated - say to me, 'I'm proud of you.' I feel strongly about always earning that and never letting black people down.

He was always - I like to say of Malcolm - he was just simply electrical. Everything he did almost was dramatic, and it wasn't that he was trying to be: it was just the nature of him.

We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.

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.

To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within 'Roots' is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents.

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

Most of the people I've met who are black in other countries look up to the blacks in this country. Though they may talk differently, they are anxious to partake of this country simply because things in their country are not physically on par with what they are here.

In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

The problem is to find the time to write. That's why I go to sea. I couldn't be happier than when at sea.

In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.

Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.

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

I don't know anywhere in the world where there is not racism against somebody.

Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.

You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.

History is written by winners.

Every death is like the burning of a library.

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.

Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country - to clear the air of the racial mirages, cliches, and lies that this country's very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years.

The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.

Most of us prefer to be as quiet as possible about giving, because every time it's publicized that we do something, if it's something of the nature of giving, we'll be doubly besieged, and you really get sick of being always criticized no matter what you do.

I travel a lot. It used to be, when I would go to any country, I could guarantee that the first question would establish my name, and the fact that I've written Roots, and the third question, at least no later than the fourth question would not be a question, so much as a statement, something like, "We understand that in America white people do such and such bad things to black people."

Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.

Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.

Every time an old person dies, it's like a library burning down.

The way to succeed is never quit. Thats it. But really be humble about it.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.

Brown people wouldn't speak to someone who was black.

Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between being a writer and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. You've got to want to write, I say to them, not want to be a writer. The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.

It's always intrigued me that amidst the group called slaves there were individuals who were extremely able, who were extremely colorful, who were powerful personalities, who by no means fit the usual images of slaves. They were people who, through their personalities and abilities, were very respected in the community where they lived by both black and white.

Is this how you repay my goodness--with badness?” cried the boy. “Of course,” said the crocodile out of the corner of his mouth. “That is the way of the world.

You're always being judged. No matter what you do, it's not the right thing. If you didn't become successful, then you'd be pointed at as one of those creatures down their who didn't take advantage of this or that, who didn't climb and rise and so forth.

We all suffer. If a man's wise, he learns from it.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.

I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.

You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.

I wasn't going to be one of those people who died wondering what if? I would keep putting my dreams to the test - even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.

Your attitude is everything. Believe in yourself and trust your material. To be a successful writer, write every single day where you feel like it or not. Never, never give up, and the world will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

Unless we learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. This is no longer merely an academic exercise, but may contain our worlds fate and our destiny.

I know that statistically, it has been proven that there is a tremendous amount of black on black crime within the inner cities.

My parents were teachers and they went out of their way to see to it that I had books. We grew up in a home that was full of books. And so I learned to read. I loved to read.

If you go back to before mankind came out of the cave, there was hatred.

The way to succeed is never quit. That's it. But really be humble about it. ... You start out lowly and humble and you carefully try to learn an accretion of little things that help you get there.

Racism and hatred are synonymous.

When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand.

I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.