Post Colonial Quotes

Ah, sahib. I know you just come to comfort a old man left to live by hisself. Soomintra say I too old-fashion. And Leela, she always by you. Why you don't sit down, sahib? It ain't dirty. Is just how it does look.'
Ganesh didn't sit down. 'Ramlogan, I come to buy over your taxis. ~ V.S. Naipaul

I was on the wrong side of colonization. My ancestry is mostly mired in having the colonial experience as colonized subjects, first as slaves and then as independent subjects with a post-colonial experience. ~ Fred D'Aguiar

National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceivable without the political movement for freedom from foreign rule. ~ Pankaj Mishra

I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial
or is it post-colonial?
cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it
assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers. ~ Salman Rushdie

Un(der)known Writers: Flavia Dzodan By The New Inquiry Few words define The Netherlands better than "imperialist". In a time of white appropriations of post colonial theory, few pause to realize that no post colonial analysis is possible while we live in a country where the "post" lays within a distant future (i.e. The Netherlands still holds colonial territories in the Caribbean). ~ Anonymous

When you have countries that have a lot of minerals and diamonds and oil and are in business with companies from all over the world - but these companies don't share, really, their profits - this is called post-post-colonial. ~ Claire Denis

I ain't know what it is to be a girl Mistress Grandsol. I pass straight from child to woman without even a pause for girl between. Girl is a privilege I never know. ~ Robert Antoni

The Whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the Agikuyu. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off. The hot water must have gone into his head.

Nevertheless, his words about a woman on the throne echoed something in the heart, deep down in their history. It was many, many years ago. Then women ruled the land of the Agikuyu. Men had no property, they were only there to serve the whims and needs of the women. Those were hard years. So they waited for women to go to war, they plotted a revolt, taking an oath of secrecy to keep them bound each to each in the common pursuit of freedom. They would sleep with all the women at once, for didn't they know the heroines would return hungry for love and relaxation? Fate did the rest; women were pregnant; the takeover met with little resistance. ~ Ngugi Wa Thiongo

I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it. ~ Isabel Allende

We have learned the lines of good taste through history and our sense of guilt, be it post-colonial or post-Holocaust. ~ Patrick Chappatte

I think for a lot of so-called post-colonial peoples, there's a feeling of not being quite legitimate, of not being pure enough. ~ Jessica Hagedorn

I mean to ask whether there is any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division say, of men into "us" (Westerners) and "they" (Orientals). For such divisions are generalities whose use historically and actually has been to press the importance of the distinction between some men and some other men, usually towards not especially admirable ends. ~ Edward W. Said

African cinema doesn't have an African industry at all and that's where our problem arises. We come to all of these initiatives with a lot of suspicion because we're so inhabited by the notion of being colonized, the post-colonial thought that someone wants us to do something that is their interest and not ours and even it's not true, there's the suspicion of it like where is this going? ~ Jihan El-Tahri

I imagine that existential dread probably ought to get a devil. A devil of post-colonial angst. A devil of complicated grief. ~ Alan Moore

'Midnight's Children' falls under the genre of post-colonial writing, and there is a range of writers like V.S. Naipaul and Salman who popularised it. 'Midnight's Children' was incredibly important in this canon. ~ Satya Bhabha

She was sensitive enough and intelligent enough to understand, and her literary education could not but have sharpened her perception of the evidence before her eyes: that in the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the destinies of post-colonial African societies two people starting off even as identical twins in the morning might quiet easily find themselves in the evening one as President shitting on the heads of the people and the other a nightman carrying the people's shit in buckets on his head. ~ Chinua Achebe

The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) moved from a legitimate to a charismatic role, reversing the course followed by Washington. Yet therewere surface similarities in their careers. Both led military rebellions against English monarchs
Cromwell against Charles I, Washington against George III. Each took local militia
the "train bands" of Cromwell, the colonial levies of Washington
and forged professional armies on a national scale. Each infused a new ethos in his troops
a religious spirit in Cromwell's case, a post-colonial American identity in Washington's. ~ Garry Wills

It was not long after that Ganesh saw a big new notice in the shop, painted on cardboard.
'Is Leela self who write that,' Ramlogan said. 'I didn't ask she to write it, mind you. She just sit down quiet quiet one morning after tea and write it off.'
It read:

NOTICE
NOTICE, IS. HEREBY; PROVIDED: THAT, SEATS!
ARE, PROVIDED. FOR; FEMALE: SHOP, ASSISTANTS!

Ganesh said, 'Leela know a lot of punctuation marks.'
That is it, sahib. All day the girl just sitting down and talking about these puncturation marks. She is like that, sahib. ~ V.S. Naipaul

As for the third Official Reason: exposing Western Hypocrisy - how much more exposed can they be? Which decent human being on earth harbors any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ warfare, chemical weapons - they virtually invented it all. ~ Arundhati Roy

It was India's forsaken multitudes - whose suitability for democracy was repeatedly questioned and whose disenfranchisement high-mindedly rationalised away by the country's post-colonial elite - who resuscitated the republic [from the Emergency] ~ Komireddi K S

Since the police department is becoming more and more militarized we're stuck in a position where we're reverting to that sort of behaviour that other places still suffer from because they're kept in that post-colonial state of development indefinitely so we can reap the benefits of taking whatever natural resources they have. ~ Immortal Technique

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. ~ James F. Cooper

That's what you people do, isn't it? Make assumptions and sell them to impressionable idiots. ~ Michael Monroe

I believe in love at first sight. Fate, the universe, all of it. But not how you're thinking. I don't mean it in the 'our souls were split and you're my other half forever and ever' sort of way. I just think you're mean to meet some people. I think the universe nudges them into your path. Even on random Monday afternoons in July. Even at the post office. ~ Becky Albertalli

I almost turned around right there. Stupid, yeah, but PTSADS doesn't care how stupid a trigger is. If you need me to spell that out, it's Post-Traumatic Stuffed Animal Death Syndrome. I thought it was pretty funny. Mom and the psychologist did not. The psychologist said I had substituted George for Dad and I actually had post-dad syndrome. I told her George was a fucking bunny. ~ Leah Raeder

An era that I specifically like is sort of late 50's, early 60's. I guess mid 50's too. I like these types of films that deal with post WWII America and this more complex leading man that kind of emerges from that. ~ Alden Ehrenreich

Unfriend people who do not post to Facebook or engage with anyone else. You'll find your posts start getting reach they never did before. Why? Facebook only releases your posts to a few people at first and watches what they do with it. ~ Robert Scoble

What made more sense was that the bargain she was bound to was to go on living as she had been doing. The bargain was already in force. Days and years and feelings much the same, except that the children would grow up, and there might be one or two more of them and they too would grow up, and she and Brendan would grow older and then old.
It was not until now, not until this moment, that she had seen so clearly that she was counting on something happening, something which would change her life. She had accepted her marriage as one big change, but not as the last one.
So, nothing now but what she or anybody else could sensibly foresee. That was to be her happiness, that was what she had bargained for, nothing secret, or strange.
Pay attention to this, she thought. She had a dramatic notion of getting down on her knees. This is serious...
It was a long time ago that this happened. In North Vancouver, when they lived in the Post and Beam house. When she was twenty-four years old and new to bargaining. ~ Alice Munro

England's not a bad country? It's just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post- industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons. 286 ~ Margaret Drabble

....It was to complete his marriage with Maimuna, the daughter of Al Hareth, the Helalite. He had become betrothed to her on his arrival at Mecca, but had post-poned the nuptials until after he had concluded the rites of pilgrimage. This was doubtless another marriage of policy, for Maimuna was fifty-one years of age, and a widow, but the connection gained him two powerful proselytes. One was Khaled Ibn al Waled, a nephew of the widow, an intrepid warrior who had come near destroy-
ing Mahomet at the battle of Ohod. He now became one of the most victorious champions of Islamism, and by his prowess obtained the appellation of " The Sword of God." The other proselyte was Khaled's friend, Amru Ibn al Aass ; the same who assailed Mahomet with poetry and satire at the commencement of his prophetic career ; who had been an ambassador from the Koreishites to the king of Abyssinia, to obtain the surrender of the fugitive Moslems, and who was henceforth destined with his sword to carry victoriously into foreign lands the faith he had once so strenuously opposed.
Note. - Maimuna was the last spouse of the prophet, and, old as she was at her marriage, survived all his other wives. She died many years after him, in a pavilion at Serif, under the same tree in the shade of which her nuptial tent had been pitched, and was there interred. The pious historian, Al Jannabi, who styles himself "a poor servant of Allah, hoping for the pardon of his sins through the mercy of God," vis ~ Washington Irving

Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose. With twenty-six shapes arranged in varying patterns, we can tell every story known to mankind, and make up all the new ones - indeed, we can do so in most of the world's known tongues. If you can give language to experiences previously starved for it, you can make the world a better place. ~ Andrew Solomon

I got a pair of red, synthetic satin women's pants through the post the other day with a phone number on. That was quite strange. I haven't tried the phone number. In times of stress I may. ~ Jarvis Cocker

In 'Falling Skies,' I was playing a soldier and a fighter, and then, when I was taken captive, you're still in this post-apocalyptic world. ~ Jessy Schram

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

If God ever commands the spirit of wisdom to depart from me, well, I reckon that I'll never be able to compose the written word again. Not in music, and not in literature. If there is a blank page before me, it wouldn't matter if my right hand held a thousand dollar ink pen from the House of Montblanc, or an ink pen branded Paper Mate, not one word would be jotted from the ink of either or, and the page would remain blank. ("Primary Blog: The Final Post at the Boutique Domain," 2015) ~ Cat Ellington

Except now everything is digital even murder. There is a record for everything under the sun from the moon and back whether we like it or not. The image that I have of the future is that it is very bleak. It is darkness visible. The black dog of depression will hang us all in the end. Considering the life we live, the values we teach our children, what we believe in everything is a movement for change and every pause between words is a revolutionary act. The 'struggle' was like a painful mental illness. The liberation in retrospect was either the exit from our slavery ushering us into a novel, brave, bold and brilliant world or a mass hallucination. The political climate in post-apartheid South Africa has gone as far as corrupting liberty. ~ Abigail George

I have attempted for years to make fun of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is a dangerous game. It's similar to poking fun at the largest, scariest bully at your school and assuming you won't get beat up. ~ Kelly Wilson

Often it isn't the initiating trauma that creates seemingly insurmountable pain, but the lack of support after. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

The solidity of the building, its quite interiors, the monumental presence of its white facade in the middle of the city- in all its deliberate order and calm, the hotel underlined its separateness from its setting. Its effect was felt most keenly by the menial staff, who traveled each day from their homes in the flood-threatened outskirts of Allahabad and approached their place of work with something like awe. They looked very ill at ease in their green uniforms and were obsequiously polite with guests, calling to mind the Indians who had come to serve in the new city of Allahabad built by the British after the rude shock of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the city whose simple colonial geography was plain from my sixth-floor hostel room, the railway tracks partitioning the congested "black town," with its minarets and temple domes, from the tree-lined grid of "white town," where for a long period no Indians, apart from servants, could appear in native dress. ~ Pankaj Mishra

A single radio post still heard him. The only link between him and the world was a wave of music, a minor modulation. Not a lament, no cry, yet purest of sounds that ever spoke despair. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

As a concept, free-trade zones are as old as commerce itself, and were all the more relevant in ancient times when the transportation of goods required multiple holdovers and rest stops. Pre-Roman Empire city-states, including Tyre, Carthage and Utica, encouraged trade by declaring themselves "free cities," where goods in transit could be stored without tax, and merchants would be protected from harm. These tax-free areas developed further economic significance during colonial times, when entire cities- including Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar - were designated as "free ports" from which the loot of colonialism could be safely shipped back to England, Europe or America with low import tariffs. Today, the globe is dotted with variations on these tax-free pockets, from duty-free shops in airports and free banking zones of the Cayman Islands to bonded warehouses and ports where goods in transit are held, sorted and packaged. ~ Naomi Klein

I like animal sidekicks. They seem to be a pretty cool trope of post-apocalyptic fiction - just because if you're going to have this lone protagonist, they're going to need someone to talk to. Dogs are overused, and cats are dumb. So that leaves monkeys. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

ON THE MODUS OPERANDI OF OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP

"According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, President Trump's disapproval rating has hit a new high."
The President's response to this news was ""I don't do it for the polls. Honestly - people won't necessarily agree with this - I do nothing for the polls," the president told reporters on Wednesday. "I do it to do what's right. I'm here for an extended period of time. I'm here for a period that's a very important period of time. And we are straightening out this country." - Both Quotes Taken From Aol News - August 31, 2018

In The United States, as in other Republics, the two main categories of Presidential motivation for their assigned tasks are #1: Self Interest in seeking to attain and to hold on to political power for their own sakes, regarding the welfare of This Republic to be of secondary importance. #2: Seeking to attain and to hold on to the power of that same office for the selfless sake of this Republic's welfare, irregardless of their personal interest, and in the best of cases going against their personal interests to do what is best for this Republic even if it means making profound and extreme personal sacrifices. Abraham Lincoln understood this last mentioned motivation and gave his life for it.

The primary information any political scientist needs to ascertain regarding the diagnosis of a particular President's modus operandi is to first take an insig ~ John Lars Zwerenz

The Pre-Historic Age Ended With A Bang. This Post-Historic Age Will End With A Cumshot Of An Auto Asphyxiated Minor Celebrity ~ Dean Cavanagh

The proposition that primitive dream imagery might reproduce, albeit imperfectly, the experience of one's ancestors, including their terrors, was rather too existentially charged for post-modern sensitivities, for which the meaningless hypothesis of memory de-junking was much more appealing. Even worse, the notion that one's own ideation, one's own monsters, or indeed oneself as a monster, might be transmitted forward to future generations threatened deeply assumptions about the privacy of the mind and an individual's discretionary power of inviolable concealment over unedifying thoughts. ~ Robert Edeson

I don't know what you want, Haley. Just because you got me off doesn't mean I have to engage in post-fuck chat. So back off. ~ Sydney Croft

The Massachusetts Land Bank, during Colonial times, prospered, and brought prosperity to the community, until it was forcibly suppressed by special act of Parliament. ~ John Buchanan Robinson

I think I'm misunderstood when I post these comments about films. So here is Kate Winslet [in Titanic] sitting on - you know, laying on this plank. This ship is down. She let her boyfriend drown. They didn't even try a second time to get him to float on that with her. So I'm angry by that, I think. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

When a guest blogger can't even be bothered sharing their own post on their social networks; they're pretty much admitting 'I don't care about this post, and I don't want to be associated with it'. In the end these guests posts are just another form of spam. ~ George Stevens

We were in Little Rock. We were assessing a very important issue. In the midst of our discussions, we were receiving urgent inquiries from The Washington Post asking about interviews. ~ Ken Starr

It just got ugly in the 1970s for New Journalism, hastened by the decline of general interest magazine. So what happened? Television, mostly, which siphoned away readers and ad dollars, turned celebrity culture into a growth industry, and assured the end of Life, the Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's – magazine that had published Mailer, Didion, Hersey, and many others. Esquire, New York, and Rolling Stones were no longer must-reads for an engaged readership that couldn't wait for the next issue to arrive in their mailboxes, eager to find out what Wolfe, Talese, Thompson, and the rest had in store for them. As the seventies drew to a close, so, too, did the last golden era of American journalism.
But there was also a sense of psychic exhaustion – that the great stories had all been told and there was nothing left to write about. ~ Marc Weingarten

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt. ~ Peter T. King

Whenever two people come together and their behavior affects one another, you have etiquette. ~ Emily Post

Sometimes when we think we are keeping a secret, the secret is actually keeping us. ~ Frank Warren

With him big Phil from Notting Hill an old "face" from the sixties a pin up gangster with a "mars bar" weal scraping his left cheek and of course two "wag" slags in tow trussed up like French Poodles with "Bratz babe" stares and Gucci Handbags ~ Saira Viola

Earthly families all look different. And while we do the best we can to create strong traditional families, membership in the family of God is not contingent upon any kind of status - marital status, parental status, financial status, social status, or even the kind of status we post on social media. ... ~ Carole M. Stephens

sometimes I wondered if the whole point of their friendship was just to post these images, to prove to the world that they had a bunch of pretty friends. ~ Jennifer Close

Rage.

Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede.

Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-against-his-will Hockenberry, dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage might be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer Achilles.

On second though, O Muse, sing nothing of me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit. ~ Dan Simmons

Even post-WWII, nobody talked about the Holocaust. It wasn't until the '50s that people started talking about it. ~ Eli Roth

But I believe that, once the shock settles, faith and energy will return. Because let's be real: we always knew this shit wasn't going to be easy. Colonial power, patriarchal power, capitalist power must always and everywhere be battled, because they never, ever quit. We have to keep fighting, because otherwise there will be no future - all will be consumed. Those of us whose ancestors were owned and bred like animals know that future all too well, because it is, in part, our past. And we know that by fighting, against all odds, we who had nothing, not even our real names, transformed the universe. Our ancestors did this with very little, and we who have more must do the same. This is the joyous destiny of our people - to bury the arc of the moral universe so deep in justice that it will never be undone. ~ Junot Diaz

Oh? Now tell me your gut reaction to the following words. Colonial.
Dellahay. Wood. Patio. Five Pieces. Sun resistant, wind resistant, Judgment
Day resistant. Amazing value at just $299. And consider the Dellahay motto
neatly inscribed on their cute little tags: 'Patio furniture isn't furniture. It's a
state of mind.' " Dad smiled, putting his arm around me as he pushed me
gently toward Garden. "I'll give you ten thousand dollars if you can tell me
what that means. ~ Marisha Pessl

Death brings the anonymity of a post office box,
allowing me to slip through the coming centuries
silent and unobserved. ~ William Roetzheim

He was enraged and bitter and hoped for a personal meeting with Sarkozy where he would recount to him France's colonial history in Africa and make him see reasons why her policy of assimilation was a voyage to the destruction of Africa, its people, land, culture and sense of belonging. ~ S.A. David

(Post Katrina) . . . He was reminded of the first time he'd run on a track with spikes. "You just fly on the track." The poor kids he saw in New Orleans were trying to run the same race in life that he was. But he was wearing spikes and they weren't. "There's a real idealism that you have to indulge to think that people in New Orleans were now going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. There were no bootstraps. ~ Michael Lewis