John Howard Griffin famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself?
-- John Howard Griffin

#Fear #Eye #Heart
He who is less than just is less than man.
-- John Howard Griffin

#Men
Every fool in error can find a passage of scripture to back him up
-- John Howard Griffin

#Errors #Scripture #Fool
If we say, as we do, that no one in this country intends for racism to lead to genocide, the effects of racism are genocidal, regardless of our intentions.
-- John Howard Griffin

#Country #Racism #Justice
When enough Americans realize how rotten are the fruits of our policy of 'benign neglect,' how costly our prejudice is both in dollars and in human misery, the demand for change will be made-not for the sake of minority people, but for the sake of all of us.
-- John Howard Griffin

#Justice #People #Minorities
This tendency to make laws that are convenient or advantageous rather than right has mushroomed.
-- John Howard Griffin

#Law #Tendencies
The completeness of this transformation appalled me. It was unlike anything I had imagined. I became two men, the serving one, and the one who panicked, who felt Negroid even to the depths of my entrails. I felt the beginings of great loneliness, not because I was a Negro, but because the man I had been, the self I knew, was hidden in the flesh of another.
-- John Howard Griffin

#Loneliness #Men #Self
The Negro. The South. These are details. The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls of other men (and in the process destroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared, and detested. I could have been a Jew in Germany, a Mexican in a number of states, or a member of any 'inferior' group. Only the details would have differed. The story would be the same.
-- John Howard Griffin

#Real #Men #Numbers

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
Fear is stronger than arms.
Look not in my eyes, for fear They mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me.
A city with one newspaper... is like a man with one eye, and often the eye is glass.
We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions... Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.
I held his gaze. I could see the storm in his eyes. I knew he was confused. I could see the fear. Then there was the love. I saw it. The fierceness in his eyes. I believed it. I could see it clearly. But it was too late now. The love wasn't enough. Everyone always said that love was enough. It wasn't. Not when your soul was shattered.
I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.
Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.
He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.

John Howard Griffin famous quotes

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