A collection of quotations and sayings by Richard Wright on truth, relationships, love, self-realization, discrimination, hatred, society, hunger, poverty, reading, death, life, epiphany, pity, religion and race.
50 Notable Quotes By Richard Wright, The Distinguished American Author And Essayist
Richard Wright was a popular American author and the first ‘Negro’ writer to become popular in the racist times in America. The word ‘Negro’ might sound intimidating, but Wright was one who liked his roots, and opposed every instance where he was discriminated on color. Majority of his work explained the conditions and livelihood of ‘African-Americans’ during and before the ‘Great Depression’ in America. Although his non-fiction novels and short stories did lead to controversies, it is true that his work called for change in the society radically. His writings and essays reflect his thoughts and beliefs on issues close to his heart. Many of his quotes and sayings aimed at bridging the race relations. Wright was moved by the ‘Communalist Party of America’ that urged “power to workers”, and found it fitting to his ideology. ‘Black Boy’ and ‘Native Son’ are the most sought-after among his books, owing to their depiction that closely related to the society back then. ‘Introduction to Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City’ and ‘I Choose Exile’, were among his acclaimed essays. Following is a collection of thoughts, sayings and quotations by Richard Wright on self-realization, society, hatred and love.
The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.
Richard Wright
Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.
Richard Wright
Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed...It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.
Richard Wright
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive.
But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target
Richard Wright
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.
Wherever I found religion in my life I found strife, the attempt of one individual or group to rule another in the name of God. The naked will to power seemed always to walk in the wake of a hymn.
...it was no longer a matter of whether I would steal or lie or murder; it was a simple, urgent matter of public pride, a matter of how much I had in common with other people.
So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting.
Richard Wright
Would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human
And if Poe were alive, he would not have to invent horror; horror would invent him.
Richard Wright
They argued about the weather, sports, sex, war, race, politics, and religion; neither of them knew the subjects they debated, but it seemed that the less they knew the better the could argue.
A man will seek to express his relation to the stars; but when a man's consciousness has been riveted upon obtaining a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is as important as the stars.
He had been defeated by that which he had sought to destroy.
Richard Wright
Then, first of all, let us admit that there is no such thing as objectivity, no such objective fact as objectivity. Objectivity is a fabricated concept, a synthetic intellectual construction...
Richard Wright
In the old days we were concerned with mobs, with thousands of men running amuck in the streets. The mob has conquered completely. When the mob has grown so vast that you cannot see it, then it is everywhere.
