Alex Haley Quotes & Sayings

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. — Alex Haley

Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help. — Alex Haley

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

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

I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

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

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. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

I don't mind shaking hands with a human being, are you one? — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

I am really quite proud of most of the people I " know who have "made it," who do things to help people. — Alex Haley

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

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

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground. — Alex Haley

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

There was a great deal of inbreeding between the Indians and the slaves. Genetically speaking, black people are some part black, some part European. — Alex Haley

In the bush, trust no one you don't know. — Alex Haley

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

One call that I never will forget came at close to four A.M., waking me; he must have just gotten up in Los Angeles. His voice said, "Alex Haley?" I said, sleepily, "Yes? Oh, hey, Malcolm!" His voice said, "I trust you seventy percent"
and then he hung up. I lay a short time thinking about him and I went back to sleep feeling warmed by that call, as I still am warmed to remember it. Neither of us ever mentioned it."
The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Alex Haley

If you need to know history, the real story of those before you, then you should go to the library and read newspaper clippings of someone like Muhammad Ali every day, then it might giver you some understanding of the man. — Alex Haley

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

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. — Alex Haley

I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one. When I once quoted this to him, tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, I don't know if I could start one. I don't know if I'd want to stop one. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

So Dad has joined the others up there. I feel that they do watch and guide, and I also feel that they join me in the hope that this story of our people can help alleviate the legacies of the fact that preponderantly the histories have been written by the winners. — Alex Haley

Carrying little Kunta in his strong arms, he walked to the edge of the village, lifted his baby up with his face to the heavens, and said softly, "Fend kiling dorong leh warrata ka iteh tee." (Behold - the only thing greater than yourself.) — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

Find the Good and Praise it" by Alex Haley — Alex Haley

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

I was weeping for all of history's incredible atrocities against fellowmen, which seems to be mankind's greatest flaw ... — Alex Haley

Most of the things that are asked of me as a representative black person, would suggest never are we equal Americans. — Alex Haley

I get interviewed a lot, and I found myself listening to what the interviewer is asking me, I'm analyzing what I'm being asked more than my response. — Alex Haley

It is the way of the world that goodness is often repaid by badness. — Alex Haley

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

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

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

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

You don't spend twenty years of your life in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you. It's a small service, and there's a lot of esprit de corps. — Alex Haley

Through this flesh, which is us, we are you, and you are us! — Alex Haley

Crazies always recognize each other. I think Melville said it, in a slightly different context: "Genius all over the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round." Of course, we're not talking about genius here, we're talking about crazies - but — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

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

Playboy: Why are you smiling? Thompson: Am I smiling? Yeah, I guess I am ... well, it's fun to lose it sometimes. — Alex Haley

The first time he had taken the massa to one of these "high-falutin' to-dos," as Bell called them, Kunta had been all but overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: awe, indignation, envy, contempt, fascination, revulsion - but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn't believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way. It took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn't live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it's possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother's milk made possible the life of privilege they led. — Alex Haley

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

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

He meant you no harm?" said Omoro.
"He acted very friendly," said the old man, "but the cat always eats the mouse it plats with. — Alex Haley

It's an hour during the week where you can just slow down. — Alex Haley

Nightly boiling and then cooling a broth of freshly pounded fudano leaves in which she soaked her feat -and the pale palms of her hands- to an inky blackness. When Kunta asked his mother she told him to run along. So he asked his father, who told him, The more blackness a woman has the more beautiful she is. — Alex Haley

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

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

I think most people when you say slavery tend to see a group of anonymous people pulling cotton sacks in great plantation fields, and that is largely true. — Alex Haley

Every death is like the burning of a library. — Alex Haley

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. — Alex Haley

Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars
caged. I am not saying there shouldn't be prisons, but there shouldn't be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He will never get completely over the memory of the bars. — Alex Haley

The anti-blackness has generated new forms of youth involvement in anti-whiteness, which in some cases is appalling. — Alex Haley

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

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. — Alex Haley

Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known. — Alex Haley

History is written by winners. — Alex Haley

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." — Alex Haley

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

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

I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world. — Alex Haley

Find the good, and praise it. — Alex Haley

You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is. — Alex Haley