Alice Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. Her writing has been praised for its insight into the lives of black women and its embrace of feminist principles. In her most famous work, The Color Purple, Walker tells the story of a young black woman’s struggles against racism and sexism in the early twentieth century.
Walker’s writing is often deeply personal and draws heavily on her experiences as a black woman growing up in the American South. She is known for her forthrightness and ability to speak candidly about complex topics such as race and gender. In addition to her novels, Walker has also written several collections of short stories, poems, and essays.
Motivational Alice Walker Quotes
- “Time moves quickly but passes quickly.” – Alice Walker.
- “All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.”
- The more I wonder, the more I love. – Alice Walker
- “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker.
- “How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mother’s names.” – Alice Walker
- “‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.” – Alice Walker
- “Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.” – Alice Walker
- “This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.” – Alice Walker.
- “In nature, nothing is perfect, and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” – Alice Walker.
- “I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.” – Alice Walker.
- “Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as Superior Knowledge in all too many universities.” – Alice Walker.
- “All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.” – Alice Walker.
- “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” – Alice Walker.
- “Be nobody’s darling, be an outcast. Take the contradictions of your life and wrap around. You like a shawl, to parry stones, to keep you warm.” – Alice Walker.
- “Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.” – Alice Walker.
- “Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.” – Alice Walker.
- “For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.” – Alice Walker.
- “Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.” – Alice Walker.
- Everyday Application: People have power because we choose (in some way or form) to give it to them. Maybe, we don’t care enough to dispute their claims of superiority. Or maybe, we don’t want to do something as drastic as move onto a deserted island to avoid politicians. The reason doesn’t matter. What does matter is that nobody is as powerful as we perceive them to be; they are just humans like us.
- “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” – Alice Walker.
- “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” – Alice Walker.
- “Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.” – Alice Walker.
- “What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.” – Alice Walker.
- You will also enjoy our article on Andrew Tate Quotes.
- “Activism is my rent for living on the planet.” – Alice Walker.
- “Being happy is not the only happiness.” – Alice Walker.
- “In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” – Alice Walker.
- “A grown child is a dangerous thing.” – Alice Walker.
- “Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.” – Alice Walker.
- “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.” – Alice Walker.
- “Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on Earth is it for.” – Alice Walker.
- “I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.” – Alice Walker.
- “…have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.” – Alice Walker.
- “Everything wants to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.” – Alice Walker.
- “We sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get the attention we do, except walk?” – Alice Walker.
- “Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.” – Alice Walker.
- “It seems our fate is to be incorrect… and in our incorrectness stand.” – Alice Walker.
- If you’re enjoying these quotes, read our collection of fate quotes that will remind you to take each day one at a time.
- “Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.” – Alice Walker.
- Everyday Application: Writing is compelling. Whether you write in a journal or share your stories with the world, there is power in putting your words to paper. Writing can help us know ourselves better, cope with trauma, or just appeal to our creative side. Check out this article for how writing can be a healing endeavour.
- “There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.” – Alice Walker.
- “Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.” – Alice Walker.
- “As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I’m the Earth. I won’t give up until the Earth gives up.” – Alice Walker.
- “Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise.” – Alice Walker.
- “It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s “mature” critics often are.” – Alice Walker.
- “It no longer bothers me that I may constantly be searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.” – Alice Walker.
- “Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.” – Alice Walker.
- Everyday Application: People need help with expectations. Often times we set them too high and then are disappointed. Other times we set them too low and then settle for things we should not. In some areas, it is ok to live frugally on surprise. However, there are other areas, like relationships, where expectations are healthy!
- “I have learned not to worry about love, but to honour it’s coming with all my heart.” – Alice Walker.
- “I’m always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence. ― Alice Walker
- “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.”― Alice Walker.
- “If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.”― Alice Walker.
- “Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.”― Alice Walker.
- “He recognized her immediately when he saw her again. And what he recognized was her energy, which seemed to precede her. As if her spirit were thrusting itself forward, into the unknown; dazzled, charmed, challenged, hopeful, happy to be energized by the mysterious, loving the adrenaline rush of surprise.”― Alice Walker.
- “Too much respect for people who are not respectful to you is a sure sign of insecurity.” ― Alice Walker.
- “Keep in mind always the present you are constructing. It should be the future you want.” ― Alice Walker.
- “I have the uncanny feeling that, just at the end of my life, I am beginning to reinhabit completely the body I long ago left.”― Alice Walker.
- “The longer I am a writer–so long now that my writing finger is periodically numb–the better I understand what writing is; what its function is; what it is supposed to do. I learn that the writer’s pen is a microphone held up to the mouths of ancestors and even stones of long ago. That once given permission by the writer–a fool, and so why should one fear?–horses, dogs, rivers, and chickens can step forward and expound on their lives. The magic of this is not so much in the power of the microphone as in the ability of the nonhuman object or animal to BE and the human animal to PERCEIVE ITS BEING.”― Alice Walker
- “We do it because we care. We care that Vincent Van Gogh mutilated his ear. We care that he destroyed his life behind a pile of manure in the yard. We care that Scott Joplin’s music lives! We care because we know this: the life we save is our own.”― Alice Walker.
- “And I don’t believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I’ll have to speak to differently, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will you be.”
- “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.”― Alice Walker.
- “there was no sympathy for the struggle that ended in defeat. Which meant there was no sympathy for the struggle itself—only for “winning.”― Alice Walker
- “Without money of one’s own in a capitalist society, there is no such thing as independence.”― Alice Walker.
Alice Walker is an African-American author and poet who has spoken powerfully about race, gender, and class. In her quote,
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any,” she urges us to recognize the personal strength we each have within us.
This message is particularly relevant in today’s political climate, where many people feel disempowered. Walker’s poetry often deals with similar themes, encouraging us to stand up for our beliefs and fight for justice. Her writing is powerful and inspirational, and it reminds us that we all have the potential to make a difference in the world.
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