Alex Haley Quotes

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
- Alex Haley

A word, for example, that is negative, pejorative, and has caused more pain and suffering is "illegitimate". But every person has a mother and father. It is another way we let society hurt others.
- Alex Haley

I think most people when you say slavery tend to see a group of anonymous people pulling cotton sacks in great plantation fields, and that is largely true.
- Alex Haley

Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
- Alex Haley

The way to succeed is never quit. That's it. But really be humble about it. ... You start out lowly and humble and you carefully try to learn an accretion of little things that help you get there.
- Alex Haley

You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.
- Alex Haley

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.
- Alex Haley

Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.
- Alex Haley

I don’t know anywhere in the world where there is not racism against somebody.
- Alex Haley

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
- Alex Haley

Unless we learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. This is no longer merely an academic exercise, but may contain our worlds fate and our destiny.
- Alex Haley

That’s what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.
- Alex Haley

You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.
- Alex Haley