Alice Walker People Quotations

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that's fine. But even if you don't quote-unquote make it, you're fine if you've given it your whole heart and soul.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission. They had a problem with my intellect, and they had a problem with my choice of lovers. They had a problem with my choice of everything.

When I was 18, I went to the Soviet Union. I kept hearing that America was planning to bomb them - lots of bombs were going to come down on these people. I went there not knowing anything, except that I thought the whole thing was stupid and that I wanted to see who these people were that we were going to bomb.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

Propaganda is amazing, people can be led to believe anything.

The dropping of bombs on people - isn't that terrorism?

As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening.

In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married - we became an interracial couple.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

I prefer to praise people and the world rather than criticize them and it.

I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

If you deny people their own voice, you'll have no idea of who they were.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows - pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music... That would be so much cheaper than bombs.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you're getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it's a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

I'm sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I'm a writer.

People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don't.

It is crucial that young people are taught sustainable child production and rearing.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn't in her.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on.

It's a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they're different. It's very limiting.

It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that's fine. But even if you don't quote-unquote make it, you're fine, if you've given it your whole heart and soul. You're totally in sync with your purpose and with the universe. And that's fine.

You don't really stay attached to things. Life goes on, so you don't really sit around and think about how they are relevant to other people. You hope that whatever you create will be relevant.

I don't focus on criticism. I prefer to praise people and the world, rather than criticize them and it.

You really can't be a good artist if you can't say what you really feel. And people may be offended, but, you know, that's how you feel, and that is your right, and that is your gift as well.

I'm mad about the waste that happens when people who love each other can't even bring themselves to talk.

God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal. Most people think he has to look like something or someone- a roofleaf or Christ- but we don't. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.

She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.

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

Many people are aware that we are in peril and that there is no trustworthy leadership.

Only dead people need loud music, you know.

Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.

No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people.

We're going to have to debunk the myth that Africa is a heaven for black people -- especially black women. We've been the mule of the world there and the mule of the world here.

People who work hard often work too hard. ... May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta, the nap and the pause in all its forms.

I am not convinced that men and women were ever meant to share the same house, though some people can do it beautifully.

Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart.

Even now, I find that no matter what has happened, I still have that trust. I have a lot of trust, that people can be better than they are.

I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.

Some people don't understand that it is the nature of the eye to have seen forever, and the nature of the mind to recall anything that was ever known.

Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone.

Surely the earth can be saved by all the people who insist on love.

During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebration. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that...

If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.