35 Alice Walker Quotes That Will Inspire You To Change The World

1. “Because whatever has happened to humanity, whatever is currently happening to humanity, it is happening to all of us. No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people…. There is only one daughter, one father, one mother, one son, one aunt or uncle, one dog, one cat, donkey, monkey, or goat in the universe, after all: the one right in front of you.”

2. “Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”

3. “Women have to summon courage to fulfill dormant dreams.”

4. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

5. “Look closely at the present you are constructing:
it should look like the future you are dreaming.”

6. “HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another—plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid.”

7. HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass.

8. HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differentness.

9. “HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.”

10. “All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.”

11. “It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it’s pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it.”

12. “Subservience of any kind is death to the spirit.”

13. “World wars have been fought and lost; for every war is against the world and every war against the world is lost.”

14. “The world has changed: it did not change without your prayers without your faith without your determination to believe in liberation and kindness; without your dancing through the years that had no beat.”

15. “I believe that the truth of any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together.”

16. “What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.”

17. “Without money of one’s own in a capitalist society, there is no such thing as independence.”

18. “When it is all too much; when the news is so bad meditation itself feels useless, and a single life feels too small a stone to offer on the altar of Peace, find a Human Sunrise. Find those people who are committed to changing our scary reality. Human sunrises are happening all over the earth, at every moment. People gathering, people working to change the intolerable, people coming in their robes and sandals or in their rags and bare feet, and they are singing, or not, and they are chanting, or not. But they are working to bring peace, light, compassion, to the infinitely frightening downhill slide of Human life.”

19. “I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.”

20. “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”

21. “A writer’s heart, a poet’s heart, an artist’s heart, a musician’s heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world…”

22. “Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.”

23. “Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.”

24. “Laughter isn’t even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out. Truly the suffering is great, here on earth. We blunder along, shredded by our mistakes, bludgeoned by our faults. Not having a clue where the dark path leads us. But on the whole, we stumble along bravely, don’t you think?”

25. “Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.”

26. “When life descends into the pit
I must become my own candle
Willingly burning my self
To light up the darkness around me.”

27. “If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.”

28. “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way…I can’t apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to… We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful…We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.”

29. “In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they’re still beautiful.”

30. “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.”

31. “Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.”

32. “We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children, and, if necessary, bone by bone.”

33. “Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.”

34. “It is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.”

35. “Because women are expected to keep silent about
their close escapes I will not keep silent
and if I am destroyed (naked tree!) someone will
please
mark the spot
where I fall and know I could not live
silent in my own lies
hearing their ‘how nice she is!’
whose adoration of the retouched image
I so despise.

No. I am finished with living
for what my mother believes
for what my brother and father defend
for what my lover elevates
for what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes
to embrace.

I find my own
small person
a standing self
against the world
an equality of wills
I finally understand.

Besides:

My struggle was always against
an inner darkness: I carry within myself
the only known keys
to my death – to unlock life, or close it shut
forever. A woman who loves wood grains, the color
yellow
and the sun, I am happy to fight
all outside murderers
as I see I must.”