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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."

“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

All Quotes by Toni Morrison

“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

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

— Toni Morrison

War

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

— Toni Morrison

Nature

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

— Toni Morrison

Power

“I like marriage. The idea.”

— Toni Morrison

Funny

“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

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

— Toni Morrison

Art

“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