Gita Gopinath Quotes

Just because you read it in a magazine,
Or see it on a TV screen
Don't make it factual.

[Belafonte]'d take me to perform for Martin Luther King's cause. But when they were marching I did not take part, because I was not a citizen

For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all.

[W]hen the President's visitors came to Guinea, we were all called on to go and entertain them. I've never seen a country that did what Sékou Touré did for artists. Even in South Africa today we are not nurtured like that.

When you give a man a dole, you deny him his dignity, and when you deny him his dignity you rob him of his destiny.

They were walking side by side, but each was alone.

I am not satisfied in making money for myself. I endeavor to provide employment for hundreds of the women of my race.

I have never thought there was much to be said in favor of dragging on long after all one's friends were dead.

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

Jail is big business, believe me. I'm in jail, I see the big business. You can feed a whole town off one jail. This jail is in the middle of a town that feeds everybody. Everybody works here, this is the main income. So if there were no criminals, nobody would work.

You just mentioned Bob Marley —  I can remember when I was in college, listening — and not agreeing with his whole philosophy necessarily, but raising my awareness of how people outside of our country were thinking about the struggles for jobs and dignity, and freedom.

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there, I was promoted to the washtub. From there, I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there, I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.

From the time they turned one they were tossed from the balconies of the kitchens, first with life preserves so they would lose their fear of the water, and then without life preservers so they would lose their respect for death.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Writings such as commentaries and annotations exist to assist people in becoming sages, but in fact they close the doors to sagehood.