FastSaying

The lives of African-Americans in this country are characterized by violence for most of our history. Much of that violence, at least to some extent, you know, done by the very state that's supposed to protect them.


Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

It's very odd that we have such an easy relationship to violence in this country, and we're ...
GABY HOFFMANN Most male victims of violence are the victims of other men's violence. So that's something t...
JACKSON KATZ Violence is a part of America. I don't want to single out rap music. Let's be honest. Americ...
SPIKE LEE There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the Wh...
TA-NEHISI COATES Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.
JOHN MALKOVICH Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal
ANDREW FAIRCHILD There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether i...
BELL HOOKS What will it profit this country if we... put our man on the Moon by 1970 and at the same time you c...
JEROME CAVANAGH We take any child that has at least a history of violence and mental health needs and can't be taken...
HENRY GARDNER The staff and one of our PTO subcommittees have worked very hard to develop a calendar of activities...
HARLEY WILLIAMS We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans h...
YVETTE CLARKE In a world of words, anything is possible...
LAURA WRIGHT LAROCHE We have to stop this violence. We have to make the political nature of the violence clear, that the ...
PATRICIA IRELAND Religious superstition consists in the belief that the sacrifices, often of human lives, made to the...
LEO NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOY I've spent the last year listening to Americans, and the state of the union that George W. Bush live...
JOSEPH LIEBERMAN For me, the toughest thing for kids to deal with is when the parents are fighting. It's not viol...
AVI ARAD We've been a country that's been fortunate to be protected by two oceans, to not have seriou...
CONDOLEEZZA RICE An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonv...
MAHATMA GANDHI When African-Americans come to France, the French show them more consideration than they would show ...
EUZHAN PALCY Despite the state of denial exhibited by most Democrats, Americans all across the nation acknowledge...
JIM SENSENBRENNER Some people draw a comforting distinction between force and violence. I refuse to cloud the issue by...
KENNETH KAUNDA Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gest...
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI Until we end our violence against the earth- a matter ignored by most pacifists, as the issue of mil...
WENDELL BERRY Last words of wisdom. Whoever you were as a child, she's your future.
CHERISE WOLAS Even though some individual scholars try to tell us there is no direct connection between images of ...
BELL HOOKS I think people need to recognize that those of us who have been so much influenced by violence in th...
JAMES C. DOBSON It is appropriate that this important milestone in the history of business education in our state sh...
DAVID BOREN As you know, in this country Anglo-Americans are about 75 to 76 percent home ownership in this count...
ALPHONSO JACKSON I think this is a monumental move by our state. This acknowledges our African-American history. This...
BETTY ANDREWS R.C. Hickman's work poignantly captures the social history of African Americans in a period of unequ...
ANGELA WILLIAMS Violence in our schools can never be tolerated. When children pass through the schoolhouse door, the...
ELIZABETH DOLE The contributions of African Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants throughout our nation's...
TAMMY DUCKWORTH That doesn't happen in 99 percent of the companies in this country. Even companies who applied to ou...
LUKE VISCONTI I think so much of the horror film is about our primal instincts, and our primal instincts are not j...
DREW GODDARD Şi, vorbind mai general, oricare ţi-ar fi linia în viaţă, dacă constaţi că alţii nu-ţi pre...
BERTRAND RUSSELL, ÎN CăUTAREA FERICIRII The proven method for saving the lives of innocent Americans is not disarming them. The proven metho...
JEFF SESSIONS Nothing in the world matters if you don't matter.
STEVEN CUOCO May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the w...
RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH Pop culture, it's crazy. There's all this violence in video games. In 'Call of Duty,'...
NATASHA LEGGERO Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.
JOHN FOSTER DULLES Our world is still darkened not only by the direct violence of civil wars, but also by innumerable o...
TADATOSHI AKIBA How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine."
The Q...
LEWIS CARROLL White Americans, stop apologizing; we live in the greatest country in the history of mankind, and it...
BURGESS OWENS I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best.
JONATHAN ANTHONY BURKETT Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'etre to the imperfection o...
LUDWIG VON MISES I think you will see a lot of strains develop in the political process that will result in violence ...
JOHN ABIZAID Most Americans know nothing about the African forest, and it seems to them a very scary, spooky dang...
DAVID QUAMMEN We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true...
SAUL DAVID To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confin...
SOPHIE KINSELLA More people work at Walmart than anywhere else in the United States, but you wouldn't know that ...
SAID SAYRAFIEZADEH Take care of your words and the words will take care of you.
AMIT RAY I have the utmost respect for them. It was formed at the time of great violence and danger, particul...
WILLIAM MORRIS Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral infer...
ALBERT EINSTEIN The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Crafting something unique and logical requires trust and mutual collaboration.
STEVEN CUOCO 'Fargo' is a tragedy with a happy ending. So you need to have that tragic underpinning, that...
NOAH HAWLEY It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence ...
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, t...
OSCAR A. ROMERO Violence - look, we live in a violent world, man. This country was founded on violence. Who's ki...
BRUCE WILLIS The vast majority of murdered whites are murdered by other whites. That's why there's no nat...
BEN SHAPIRO This is the greatest society in all of human history, the greatest country ever. Many of the decisio...
MARCO RUBIO Indeed, the study of universities and the great men and women who have attended them leads me to thi...
PAUL JOHNSON Maxim 6:
If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.

HOWARD TAYLER Violence may be a good focus to organize around, but we have to look at women's lives in our ent...
PATRICIA IRELAND The nature and degree of violence described by the victim and corroborated by the extent of her inju...
DETECTIVE BRYAN JAMISON Do you know great people are continually quoted while the average always misquote great people?
ONYI ANYADO We are hell different but vanity keeps us stuck.
PARUL WADHWA We knew that more research had to be done -- that a more complete picture had to be painted on the r...
JANE FORBES CLARK We examine and highlight the history of the African descendants in America, and know that each and e...
YVETTE CLARKE The [victim] lives in the vicinity, and there appears to be a pattern of some trouble and violence, ...
JUSTIN HARMON I do think, however, that there's a very diverse point of view in the African-American community...
J. C. WATTS If there isn't at least the threat of violence in art, it tends to be kind of tiresome.
TELLER We should not forget that in the '60s, George Wallace's motto was 'segregation forever,&...
CORETTA SCOTT KING The most precious things that we have in our every day lives, are the ones that are least notice by ...
ANONYMOUS The study findings suggest that depression or elevated depressive symptoms during adolescence may, a...
JOCELYN LEHRER Civilization in our time is driven by materialism and troubled by pollution, over-population, corrup...
MICHAEL FROME Now Louisiana has been laid low by the violence of Mother Nature, ... We are grateful for your prese...
DAVID RABE I think if there was no violence in our world, there would be no violence in film. Violence is a par...
NIELS ARDEN OPLEV Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyrann...
STEVEN PINKER A feeling of alienation existed in India about life in Pakistan because most of what was known was n...
UMERA AHMAD Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by v...
BOB DYLAN Deep within I'm shaken by the violence of existing for only you...
SARAH MCLACHLAN We should not diminish in any way the fact that there were acts of heroism by individuals and victor...
BILL FRIST The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of histo...
TOM HAYDEN Opportunities don’t make U turns.
JAMES J-PIERRE I certainly know all about the Jersey jokes that amuse the rest of the country. You've probably ...
SHARON KAY PENMAN Look, this is not a movie for kids. It is a movie that does put that violence in context and it show...
MICHAEL MEDVED We rush, rush, rush to get things done, and in the process, our lives rush past us.
Life isn't ...
LISA VERGE HIGGINS We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our ...
JOSHUA FOER O, the sheer magnificence of words that come together like waves upon a beach, each telling its own ...
JOHN M SHEEHAN Dictators like violence, ... If you use violence against dictators they are happy. You must undermin...
ZORAN DJINDJIC We, as Americans, at least - I mean, I love my country - but we're so self-righteous sometimes, ...
PETER DINKLAGE The findings of this study suggest that elevated depressive symptom levels during adolescence may se...
JOCELYN LEHRER I want the violence among young people in this country to stop - particularly gang violence.
JIM BROWN This is how to understand America. So having the Museum of African American History and Culture on t...
LONNIE BUNCH Our hearts and deepest sympathies go out to the families affected by this tragedy. We are stunned by...
MARK YOUNG Face your fears by remembering the power of God's cleaning truth. To change the way you are, change ...
CRAIG GROESCHEL The violence done us by others is often less painful than that which we do to ourselves
FRANçOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

More Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think riots happen when communities are under pressure for long periods of time. That's not a ...
TA-NEHISI COATES I love living around black people. Home is home. We suffer under racism and the physical deprivation...
TA-NEHISI COATES It meant something to see people who looked like me in comic books. It was this beautiful place that...
TA-NEHISI COATES We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me.
TA-NEHISI COATES We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with th...
TA-NEHISI COATES I feel like my job is to look at the world and to report what I see, to write what I see as honestly...
TA-NEHISI COATES My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied wit...
TA-NEHISI COATES I haven't checked, but I highly suspect that chickens evolved from an egg-laying ancestor, which...
TA-NEHISI COATES I love America the way I love my family - I was born into it. And there's no escape out of it.
TA-NEHISI COATES 'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and contro...
TA-NEHISI COATES One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we d...
TA-NEHISI COATES We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that con...
TA-NEHISI COATES My belief is in the chaos of the world and that you have to find your peace within the chaos and tha...
TA-NEHISI COATES The country in which reparations actually happen is a very different one than the one we live in.
TA-NEHISI COATES The soul is part of the body. The mind is part of the body. When folks do physical violence to black...
TA-NEHISI COATES When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 10...
TA-NEHISI COATES When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It ha...
TA-NEHISI COATES I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly e...
TA-NEHISI COATES The plunder of black communities is not a bump along the road, but it is, in fact, the road itself t...
TA-NEHISI COATES Racism is a physical experience.
TA-NEHISI COATES There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the Wh...
TA-NEHISI COATES I feel some need to represent where I'm from. But ultimately, I think my only real responsibilit...
TA-NEHISI COATES There are African-American families around this country - a large, large number of African-American ...
TA-NEHISI COATES African Americans are one of the oldest ethnic groups in this country. We been here since the beginn...
TA-NEHISI COATES We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system ...
TA-NEHISI COATES The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the ma...
TA-NEHISI COATES Forgiveness is a big part of - especially post-civil rights movement - is a big part of African-Amer...
TA-NEHISI COATES I enjoy the challenge of trying to say things beautifully. The message is secondary in that sense. O...
TA-NEHISI COATES I wasn't the biggest Captain America fan, but increasingly, I see him as a great character. Wint...
TA-NEHISI COATES I just want to be really clear about this: Anyone who has read Colin Powell's biography - there&...
TA-NEHISI COATES When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really ...
TA-NEHISI COATES I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere.
TA-NEHISI COATES It's hard for me to view Baltimore outside the context of what Baltimore has always been in my m...
TA-NEHISI COATES You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourse...
TA-NEHISI COATES There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about m...
TA-NEHISI COATES Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader ...
TA-NEHISI COATES I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 ...
TA-NEHISI COATES It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books t...
TA-NEHISI COATES I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X's speech 'Message to the Grass Roots.'
TA-NEHISI COATES As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories ...
TA-NEHISI COATES I constantly write about my safety walking to and from school, and then I would come home at night, ...
TA-NEHISI COATES You can't tolerate anybody attempting to threaten or intimidate your body. You must respond with...
TA-NEHISI COATES The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intelle...
TA-NEHISI COATES Won't reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a ...
TA-NEHISI COATES [whiteness] has no real meaning divorced from the machinery of criminal power. The new people were s...
TA-NEHISI COATES When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I'm always surprised. I don&...
TA-NEHISI COATES My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition.
TA-NEHISI COATES I was peace pipes and treaties. My style was to talk and duck. It was an animal tactic, playing dead...
TA-NEHISI COATES The black people in these films seemed to love the worst things in life—love the dogs that rent th...
TA-NEHISI COATES I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded scie...
TA-NEHISI COATES You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine...
TA-NEHISI COATES My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers—even the answers they the...
TA-NEHISI COATES You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales th...
TA-NEHISI COATES I think at places like 'Slate' or the magazine where I work, there was a really poor record ...
TA-NEHISI COATES I do understand how hate eats at the soul and how to purge yourself of hate.
TA-NEHISI COATES You can oppose reparations all you want, but you got to know the facts. You really, really do.
TA-NEHISI COATES I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this te...
TA-NEHISI COATES The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of e...
TA-NEHISI COATES The American real-estate industry believed segregation to be a moral principle. As late as 1950, the...
TA-NEHISI COATES [Clyde Ross] was stationed in California. He found that he could go into stores without being bother...
TA-NEHISI COATES From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legiti...
TA-NEHISI COATES In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy.
TA-NEHISI COATES You do not give your precious body to the billy clubs of Birmingham sheriffs, nor to the insidious a...
TA-NEHISI COATES I would say as a journalist, I would envision travelling to other countries that have had to reckon ...
TA-NEHISI COATES When President Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, 65 percent of African Americans na...
TA-NEHISI COATES Our art is made in cities like New York by people who are running from other places. They feel thems...
TA-NEHISI COATES I do not believe we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I...
TA-NEHISI COATES Dylan's voice was awful, an aged quaver that sounded nothing like the deep-throated or silky R&B...
TA-NEHISI COATES In 2001, the Associated Press published a three-part investigation into the theft of black-owned lan...
TA-NEHISI COATES To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before al...
TA-NEHISI COATES Superheroes are best imagined in comic books. The union between the written word, the image, and the...
TA-NEHISI COATES The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible-that is precisely why they are so...
TA-NEHISI COATES I know now that all people hunger for a noble, unsullied past, that as sure as the black nationalist...
TA-NEHISI COATES In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legi...
TA-NEHISI COATES But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has neve...
TA-NEHISI COATES The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.
TA-NEHISI COATES I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interest...
TA-NEHISI COATES One Saturday morning last May, I joined the presidential motorcade as it slipped out of the southern...
TA-NEHISI COATES You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at...
TA-NEHISI COATES I think it was like playing somebody in tennis who's a little better than you. You get better just b...
AL COATES There are things that went wrong in the front office and the chain of command. But those are things ...
AL COATES Particularly in the first period, he made two or three key saves that if one or two go in, maybe cha...
AL COATES Hopefully we can get through this quickly and get back to full strength.
AL COATES For the most part, the game had been decided by then. We had a really solid game plan and the team e...
AL COATES I'm so not scary. I'm a pussycat. But what are you going to do, right? I mean, these cheekbo...
KIM COATES It was a lot more fun working with film.
ANNE COATES I like meeting the people. I'm a theatre person.
ANNE COATES Take jobs where you can.
ANNE COATES Preview days are the worst days of your life.
ANNE COATES Stephen shoots just enough coverage.
ANNE COATES Otherwise the investment which has gone in has been a waste up until now.
ANDREW COATES In general, one has to ask why complete the International Space Station anyway. One worries about pu...
ANDREW COATES The knock-on effects to the International Space Station are quite dramatic ... (long delays) could p...
ANDREW COATES As water comes off the rings, it is split by sunlight; the resulting hydrogen and atomic oxygen are ...
ANDREW COATES Venus provides an extreme test for the atmospheric physics models that we have for Earth.
ANDREW COATES Venus was born with the same sorts of constituents as Earth, which means there was some water in the...
ANDREW COATES There never was a chip, it is said, that Bill Gates couldn't slow down with a new batch of features.
JAMES COATES I know people have tattooed my 'Sons of Anarchy' photos, they've painted them, on their ...
KIM COATES What we generally fail to realize is that in talking today to the Indians we are face to face with t...
AUSTIN COATES When I decided to go to university I didn't know what I wanted to do. When I had an opportunity ...
KIM COATES These volunteers are wonderful. Some have been here since 5:30 this morning setting up and directing...
CAROLYN COATES They want a jury that can say, 'I've heard about this case, but I can set aside what I've heard, fol...
BILL COATES We were busy everyday, it didn't really get slow until we had that window when we were coming home.
BILL COATES I wasn't going to die wondering why we didn't win, like we didn't win (when competing with) Brisbane...
JOHN COATES The Ivy League is definitely part of the third that's a reach. The [CAA] conference itself is much b...
ROY COATES The Ivy League is a step up for the most part.
ROY COATES Limonene has been around forever, carbon dioxide as well. What we've been able to do is devise this ...
GEOFFREY COATES Limonene has been around forever, carbon dioxide as well. What we've been able to do is devise this ...
GEOFFREY COATES This has always been about the fact that the Michigan wine industry has been so successful that (dis...
RICK COATES And now they're looking at having the rules change.
RICK COATES I know for a fact that most of our smaller wineries would have to close up under provisions of that ...
RICK COATES The typical exposure has been an occasional lapse for a variety of reasons -- the condom broke, the ...
TOM COATES Stadiums are generally going to be used 85 or 90 times a year - between a couple of games prior to t...
DENNIS COATES If you think they're going to substitute between different kinds of spending, then there's no new sp...
DENNIS COATES Should the Colts happen to win the Super Bowl, that would have an effect.
DENNIS COATES They've changed their stance, which is good, which is a positive and the market has taken that posit...
MICHAEL COATES Emily and Sarah were very outstanding. Elena also did quite well.
ROY COATES We appreciate all our sponsors who support us here at the center.
CAROLYN COATES We also have our own library, because sometimes seniors forget about taking books back and they have...
CAROLYN COATES They focused on their game, not searching on the screens to see who's got what. Amy was totally rela...
TOM COATES Getting people stranded on their rooftops to safety is a priority. We want to get people out because...
FRANK COATES Looters are hitting food stores, they're hitting department stores, they're in jewelry stores and gu...
FRANK COATES People need to take this very seriously and get to a safe area while they can.
FRANK COATES I'm getting deluged by people wanting to know more, ... It's fun to talk to people envisioning other...
GEOFFREY COATES We're really excited about not only using a byproduct from the orange juice industry but also from t...
GEOFFREY COATES The issues are still on the table, but there's been no decision at this time,
LINDA COATES That means that just about every mare that could have gotten pregnant did, ... This is the first tim...
LINDA COATES If the public decides they're not in favor of fertility control, we have only one option left - gath...
LINDA COATES That means that just about every mare that could have gotten pregnant did, ... This is the first tim...
LINDA COATES It means if the board doesn't make a ruling in 45 days, we'll have to shut the program down for this...
LINDA COATES They seem to be able to handle these catastrophic events and survive,
LINDA COATES The longer you drift the more you will learn. What you learn affects the kind of person you end up t...
CHANG TA-CHUN The best, the most exquisite automobile is a walking stick; and one of the finest things in life is ...
ROBERT COATES HOLLIDAY Greatness is achieving something unimaginable and doing that feat with ease
LEE S COATES Is there anywhere else to sleep tonight... Anywhere?' I pleaded.
There's Mei's office, but you'...
TA'AFULI ANDREW FIU