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Toni Morrison

17 quotes

Some people are known for what they did; Toni Morrison is known for what they said. The range of their thinking — from Women to Power — speaks to an intellectual restlessness that shows in every quote. Our collection holds 21 quotes from Toni Morrison, each offering a different angle on Women, Power, Nature, Money, and War. Here is a taste of their wisdom: "I like marriage. The idea."

“Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network.”

— Toni Morrison

Money

All Quotes by Toni Morrison

“Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.”

— Toni Morrison

War

“The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.”

— Toni Morrison

Nature

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

— Toni Morrison

Nature

“I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.”

— Toni Morrison

Women

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.”

— Toni Morrison

Beauty

“It's been mentioned or suggested that Paradise will not be well studied, because it's about this unimportant intellectual topic, which is religion.”

— Toni Morrison

Religion

“I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.”

— Toni Morrison

Family

“I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.”

— Toni Morrison

Money

“You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.”

— Toni Morrison

Alone

“Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.”

— Toni Morrison

Equality

“The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.”

— Toni Morrison

Power

“Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network.”

— Toni Morrison

Money

“Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.”

— Toni Morrison

Art

“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”

— Toni Morrison

Friendship

“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.”

— Toni Morrison

Power

“There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.”

— Toni Morrison

Education

“I like marriage. The idea.”

— Toni Morrison

Funny