Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Bessie Head

103 quotes

“It's only education that turns a man away from his tribe.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t care about people. I don’t care about anything, not even the white man. I want to feel what it is like to live in a free country and then maybe some of the evils in my life will correct themselves.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He sat quite still, staring ahead with calm, empty eyes, and he looked so lordly for all his tattered coat and rough cowhide shoes that Makhaya smiled and walked up to him and greeted him.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The country presented overwhelming challenges, he said, not only because the rainfall was poor but because the majority of the people engaged in subsistence farming were using primitive techniques that ruined the land. All this had excited his interest.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But witch doctors were human, and nothing, however odd and perverse, need be feared if it was human.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why should men be brought up with a false sense of superiority over women? People can respect me if they wish, but only if I earn it.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the mentality of the old hag that ruined a whole continent - some sort of clinging, ancestral, tribal belief that a man was nothing more than a grovelling sex organ, that there was no such thing as privacy of soul and body, and that no ordinary man would hesitate to jump on a mere child.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well-educated men often come to the crossroad of life .. One road might lead to fame and importance, and another might lead to peace of mind. It's the road of peace of mind that I'm seeking. [”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this country there is a great tolerance of evil. It is because of death that we tolerate evil. All meet death in the end, and because of death we make allowance for evil though we do not like it.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was his belief that a witty answer turneth away wrath and that the oil of reason should always be poured on troubled waters.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tie a man's hands behind his back and then ask him if he's going to chop down a tree.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One might go so far as to say that it is strong, dominating personalities who might play a decisive role when things are changing. Somehow they always manage to speak with the voice of authority, and their innate strength of character drives them to take the lead in almost any situation. Allied to all this is their boundless optimism and faith in their fellow men.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You find yourself throwing blows but weeping at the same time, because of all the people who sit and wail in the darkness, and because of all the fat smug persecutors to whom this wailing is like sweet music, and some inner voice keeps on telling you that your way is right for you, that the process of rising up from the darkness is an intensely personal and private one, and that if you can find a society that leaves the individual to develop freely you ought to choose that society as your home.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most men want to achieve great victories ... But I am only looking for a woman.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There seemed to be ancient, ancestral lines drawn around the African man which defined his loyalties, responsibilities, and even the duration of his smile.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things wouldn’t have been so bad if black men as a whole had not accepted their oppression and added to it with their own taboos and traditions.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't know these people but my search for a faith has taught me that life is a fire in which each burns until it is time to close the shop.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. ... It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion a like that.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had grown up in an atmosphere where the most important thing in the world was the stronger whose shadow darkened the doorstep. People were the central part of the universe of Africa, and the world stood still because of this.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poor people are poor because they don't know how to get rich.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dinorego was saying, ‘We can progress too, even though we are uneducated men. The mind of an uneducated man works like this: he is a listener and a believer. Most of all he is a believer.’”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was always something on this earth man was forced to love and worship by reason of its absence. People in cloudy, misty climates worshiped the sun, and people in semi-desert countries worshipped the rain.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most men were waiting for the politicians to sort out their private agonies.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being an African man he ought to have known that nothing happened on the continent of Africa without all Africans getting to know of it.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the trees were dying, from roots upwards,' he said. 'Does everything die like this?' 'No,' she said. 'You may see no rivers on the ground but we keep the rivers inside us. That is why all good things and all good people are called rain. Sometimes we see the rain clouds gather even though not a cloud appears in the sky. It is all in our heart.'”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was always something on this earth man was forced to love and worship by reason of its absence. People in cloudy, misty climates worshipped the sun, and people in semi-desert countries worshipped the rain.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No words, however wise, could explain the awfulness of the death, not while the living were firmly attached to love, child-bearing, child-rearing, hunger, struggle, and the sunrise of tomorrow. Life had to flow all the time, for the living, like water in a stream.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you said no, no, no, and kept your claws in a people's heart, what else did you want but that they should all die?”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Was he crying now because, for the first time in his life, he was feeling what it must be like to face a tomorrow without any future?”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Therefore the Good God cast one last look at Makhaya, whom he intended revenging almightily for his silent threat to knock him down. He would so much entangle this stupid young man with marriage and babies and children that he would always have to think, not twice but several hundred times, before he came to knocking anyone down.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before the white man became universally disliked for his mental outlook it was there.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You just have to look different ... then seemingly anything can be said and done to you as your outer appearance reduces you to the status of a non-human being.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rhythm of sunrise, the rhythm of sunset, filled her life.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...a door silently opened on the small, dark airless room in which their souls had been shut for a long time. The wind of freedom, which was blowing throughout the world for all people, turned and flowed into the room.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was a thin little fellow with a hollowed-out chest and comic knobbly knees.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps they want me to send a message to the children,’ he thought tenderly, noting that the clouds were drifting in the direction of his home some hundred miles away. But before he could frame the message, the warder in charge of his work span shouted:‘Hey, what you tink you’re doing, Brille?’”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The prisoner swung round, blinking rapidly, yet at the same time sizing up the enemy. He was a new warder, named Jacobus Stephanus Hannetjie. His eyes were the color of the sky but they were frightening. A simple, primitive, brutal soul gazed out of them.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were grouped together for convenience, as it was one of the prison regulations that no black warder should be in charge of a political prisoner lest this prisoner convert him to his views. It never seemed to occur to the authorities that this very reasoning was the strength of Span One and a clue to the strange terror they aroused in the warders.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be good comrades, my children. Cooperate, then life will run smoothly.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hannetjie is just a child and stupidly truthful.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man really [is] a child.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Up until the arrival of Warder Hannetjie, no warder had dared beat any member of Span One and no warder had lasted more than a week with them. The battle was entirely psychological. Span One was assertive and it was beyond the scope of white warders to handle assertive black men. Thus, Span One had got out of control. They were the best thieves and liars in the camp. They chatted and smoked tobacco. And since they moved, thought and acted as one, they had perfected every technique of group concealment.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“he said, “I don’t take orders from a kaffir. I don’t know what kind of kaffir you tink you are. Why don’t you say Baas. I’m your Baas. Why don’t you say Baas, hey?” Brille blinked his eyes rapidly but by contrast his voice was strangely calm.“I’m twenty years older than you,” he said. It was the first thing that came to mind, but the comrades seemed to think it a huge joke. A titter swept up the line. The next thing Warder Hannetjie whipped out a knobkerrie and gave Brille several blows about the head.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know, comrades,” he said, “I’ve got Hannetjie. I’ll betray him tomorrow.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was in Botswana where, mentally, the normal and the abnormal blended completely in Elizabeth’s mind.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be the same as others in heart; just be a person.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is when you cry, in the blackest hour of despair, that you stumble on a source of goodness.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When someone says 'my people' with a specific stress on the blackness of those people, they are after kingdoms and permanently child-like slaves. 'The people' are never going to rise above the status of 'the people'. They are going to be told what is good for them by the 'mother' and the 'father'.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Life is such a gentle, treasured thing. I learn about it every minute. I think about it so deeply.'”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When people stumble upon magic they study it very closely, because all living people are, at heart, amateur scientists and inventors. Why must racialists make an exemption of the black man? Why must she come here and help the black man with a special approach: ha, ha, ha, you're never going to come up to our level of civilisation?”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source