Randall Robinson Quotes

The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. The country with one-twentieth of the world's population has one-fourth of those in prison.

I was really worn down by an American society that is racist, smugly blind to it, and hugely self-satisfied.

Every people, in order to remain healthy and strong, has to have a grasp of its foundation story. Culture is a chrysalis - it is protective, it takes care of you. That's what cultures are for. You cannot rob a people of language, culture, mother, father, the value of their labor - all of that - without doing vast damage to those people.

I wanted to write and think. Activism is a displacing kind of passion.

I've always thought I had pretty good instincts for people. There is a short list of people I've worked with over my career with whom I've not been able to distinguish easily between the public persona and the real private person.

I think people involved with institutions find it harder to know the time to go than the time to come.

You try to steer a course in American society that's not self-destructive. But America is a country that inflicts injury. It does not like to see anything that comes in response, and accuses one of anger as if it were an unnatural response.

People need their history like they need air and food.

Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness

I can't think of a more mediocre human talent than George Bush. He obviously is a product of family advantage, and he's the worst American President of all time.

We've been taught in America that big is best. That's why people have to believe that they must live in the greatest country in the world, which is absolutely idiotic.

Bush people didn't like him, and they never liked him. They didn't like him because they don't like democracy. They like you to have an election, but they like you to elect the people they want you to elect.

I am not a churchgoing man. Strangled in the vines of form and choked with ritual Christians, Sunday service held no appeal for me as a child. When my parents released me from compulsory attendance, I would never return. In my view, religion is best practiced out of doors, in nature's cathedral of miracles where spirits and the arts of heaven mingle unencumbered. The spirits were present on the tiny unmarked parcel at Mount Vernon that early autumn afternoon.
Hazel and I stood for a long while in complete silence. Words would have marred, much as they misserve this inadequate telling of what we felt. We had been touched by wearied souls calling, in a language ethereal as morning mist, from the near realm that awaits us all.
These were 'our' ancestors and, alone behind an old wooden outbuilding, my wife and I had wordlessly worshiped with them on that clear crisp afternoon.

Reagan was conservative, but he didn't approach global management with an unbending religious zeal.

I've opposed black regimes and white regimes, leftist regimes and rightist regimes. I'm close to Aristide because I have respect for him, but all that is beside the point.

I never met a white person till I was a grown man. I never went to school with a white till I was twenty-six years old, at Harvard Law School. The insult of segregation was searing and unforgettable. It has left a great scar, and will be with me for the rest of my life.

I think the business community knows that half the world's oil reserves are gone. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and now there's the scramble for what remains.

But the differences between the two races, especially that of colour, led Jefferson to advocate the total removal of the Negroes, after emancipation, "beyond the reach of mixture." My dear Miss Sally Hemings, has the man no shame?

Democracy requires that if you who don't like the outcome of elections you have to tolerate it and then pursue your interest the next time around.