A Quote by Ayi Kwei Armah

True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle?

Ayi Kwei Armah

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Above After Becoming Been Began Behind Big Blackness Castle Changed Desire Different Discover Down Fighting Find Governor Growing Grows Had Hands Hidden Himself His Hope Last Life Like Live Lot Made Man Many Men More Old Older Only People Power President Real Same Saw See Should Slave Some Some People Spent Tear Then True Truth Used Useful Veils Which White White Man Why Youth

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Ayi Kwei Armah
Ghanaian - Writer
Born: October 28, 1939

Ahh, my heart fell down when I began to see dead buffalo scattered all over our beautiful country, killed and skinned, and left to rot by white men, many, many hundreds of buffalo. ... Our hearts were like stones. And yet nobody believed, even then, that the white man could kill all the buffalo. Since the beginning of things there had always been so many!

Pretty Shield

If most of the reviewers are white cis men, if most of the distributors are white cis men, most of the executives in history have been white cis men. Most of the people who have been giving awards to people are people who've already been in the business - retired white cis men. They've been creating a body of narrative forever.

Jill Soloway

I'm a major feminist. There's a real politic in life, where I've been in rooms where real decisions are made, and it's a lot of powerful white men. There are women in those rooms, but not as many as there should be.

Courtney Love

Imagine: you've spent all day traipsing round London, lost in a maze of chaos, trying to find a hidden illusion; you've been living on hope, ignoring reality, fuelled only by feelings you don't understand. You've been looking for a dream, never truly believing you'd find it, but now – incredibly – you have. It's right there in front of you – just behind that off-white door. It's there ...

Kevin Brooks

Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything had changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not stay there. Not after the other people entered into it.

James Jones

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the black man in America, for the past 400 years, has been like a boy in the white man's house, begging the white man for a job, for food, clothing and shelter. And then after the white man provides him with all of these things, he turns around and get - has the nerve to get angry at the white man when the white man tries to control his life.

Malcolm X

People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'm dreaming of a white president. Just like the ones we've always had. A real live white man. Who knows the score, how to handle money or start a war. Wouldn't even have to tell me what we were fighting for. He'd be the right man, if he were a white man.

Randy Newman

And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

Ursula K. Le Guin

There are truths that shield themselves behind veils, and are best spoken by implication. Even the sun veils himself in his own rays to blind the gaze of the too curious starer.

Amos Bronson Alcott

As we began to read more and more journals of men who had been in the Civil War and then been in the Indian Wars, we realized there was a whole universe of men whose souls had been shattered, whose lives had been utterly destroyed by what they had to do.

Edward Zwick

For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!' I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered. I liked white better,' I said. White!' he sneered. 'It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.' In which case it is no longer white,' said I. 'And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.' - Gandalf

J. R. R. Tolkien

"There's got to be more to life than just living," Foyle said to the robot. "Then find it for yourself, sir. Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts." "Why can't we all move forward together?" "Because you're all different. You're not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow." "Who leads?" "The men who must... driven men, compelled men." "Freak men." "You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory."

Alfred Bester

I have always been supported by the men in my life, which is why I think I've been successful in many of my endeavors. My father believed I could do anything. He even wrote to Al Gore and told him that he thought I should be his vice president.

Carolyn Maloney

In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly.

Amos Bronson Alcott

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

John Lewis

A Quote by Ayi Kwei Armah

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