Lorraine Hansberry Quotes
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The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
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Mama - Mama - I want so many things... I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy.
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Everybody talking 'bout heaven ain't going there!
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A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men - and people in general.
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This is one of the glories of man, the inventiveness of the human mind and the human spirit: whenever life doesn't seem to give an answer, we create one.
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Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey! ... Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress...
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When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven.
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I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and - I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.
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Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all... When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
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I think that the glorious thing about the human race is that it does change the world -- constantly. The world or 'life' may seem to more often overwhelm the human being's capacity for struggling against being overwhelmed which is remarkable and exhilarating.
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Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.
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It isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!
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One for whom bread- food- is not enough.
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I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.
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[T]here is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture -- in front of us -- our own little mirage that we think is the future.
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Big Walter used to say, he'd get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, 'Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.'
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Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.
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I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!
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The grim possibility is that she who 'hides her brains' will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with 'hidden brains' or none at all.
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I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.
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That's what being eccentric means--being natural.
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Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.
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I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!" "Finish your eggs first.
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Once upon a time freedom used to be life-now it's money. I guess the world really do change.
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I was born black and female.
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A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition
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Take away the violence and who will hear the man of peace?
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...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].
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Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women
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Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually -- without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts? This is what I puzzle about.
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