Black Like Me John Howard Griffin Quotes & Sayings

A law is not good merely because the legislature wills it, but the legislature has the mortal duty to will only that which is good. — John Howard Griffin

It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. — John Howard Griffin

Racists are not the pipe-smoking type, I thought to myself. — John Howard Griffin

The biggest cause of environmental destruction is poverty. Starving people can't worry about pollution. They worry about food. Half — Michael Crichton

Now you go into oblivion. — John Howard Griffin

The core concept in Griffin's writings about racism - that members of dominant groups tend to view minorities, because they seem different in some extrinsic way, as intrinsically other, and "as merely underdeveloped versions of their own imprisoning culture" - was intuited in Black Like Me and articulated in a seminal essay, "The Intrinsic Other — John Howard Griffin

In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old. — Alfred Marshall

Phew!" His small blue eyes shone with repugnance, a look of such unreasoning contempt for my skin that it filled me with despair. It was a little thing, but piled on all the other little things it broke something in me. Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation - not of myself but of all men who were black like me. — John Howard Griffin

No doubts our generation is producing another form of grub street literature.. Welcome to the world of hack writers.. — Himmilicious

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad. — Miles Davis

Keep moving!"
"Bea's arguing with the floor. — Joel N. Ross

I want to know without words. I want to fall so violently that I risk breaking into a million pieces. I want to love so desperately it's indecent. I want it to be wild and fated and forever. A no-choice connection. — Tia Williams

In Black Like Me, I tried to establish one simple fact, which was to reveal the insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color, by his philosophical "accident" - rather than by who he is in his humanity. — John Howard Griffin

If the judgement makes the law and not the law directs the judgement, it is impossible there should be such a thing as an illegal judgement given. — John Howard Griffin

It is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected. The tendency of the individual life is to be static rather than dynamic, and this tendency is made into a propulsion by civilization, where the obvious only is seen, and the unexpected rarely happens. When the unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently grave import, the unfit perish. They do not see what is not obvious, are unable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting their well-grooved lives to other and strange grooves. In short, when they come to the end of their own groove, they die. — Jack London