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When someone says 'my people' with a specific stress on the blackness of those people, they are after kingdoms and permanently child-like slaves. 'The people' are never going to rise above the status of 'the people'. They are going to be told what is good for them by the 'mother' and the 'father'.

— Bessie Head A Question of Power (1973)

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More quotes by Bessie Head

Before the white man became universally disliked for his mental outlook it was there.

Maru (1971)

Above all the necessities of life, human beings need love and it is often the one thing most denied to them.

The Cardinals. With Meditations and Short Stories (1993)

But witch doctors were human, and nothing, however odd and perverse, need be feared if it was human.

When Rain Clouds Gather (1968)

I have always been just me, with no frame of reference to anything beyond myself."

A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990)

Whatever my manifold disorders are, I hope to get them sorted out pretty soon, because I've just got to tell a story."

A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990)

All Bessie Head quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bessie Head (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.