Molly > Molly's Quotes

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
― James Baldwin

“We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“What else is a nation but a patchwork of cities and towns; cities and towns a patchwork of neighborhoods; and neighborhoods a patchwork of homes?”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Housing is too fundamental a human need, too central to children’s health and development, too important to expanding economic opportunities and stabilizing communities to be treated as simply a business, a crude investment vehicle.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“capitalism is inherently about workers trying to get as much, and owners trying to give as little, as possible. With unions largely out of the picture, corporations have chipped away at the conventional mid-century work arrangement, which involved steady employment, opportunities for advancement and raises, and decent pay with some benefits.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

“Poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

“When we refuse to recognize what works, we risk swallowing the lie that nothing does. We risk imagining the future only as more of the same. We risk despairing, perhaps the most exculpating of all emotions, and submitting to cynicism, perhaps the most conservative of all belief systems.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

“Choice is the antidote for exploitation. So a crucial step toward ending poverty is giving more Americans the power to decide where to work, live, and bank, and when to start a family.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

“Consider: Whether you’re a human being, an insect, a microbe, or a stone, this verse is true. All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—the ones abolishing slavery and guaranteeing citizenship rights—still exist, but they’ve been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legislatures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don’t much matter.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“The police,” my father told them, “may be able to avenge you, but they can’t protect you.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn’t believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“When apparent stability disintegrates, As it must— God is Change— People tend to give in To fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough To unify people They divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, They create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, Until they are exhausted and destroyed, Until they are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“That's an old company-town trick—get people into debt, hang on to them, and work them harder. Debt slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“It isn’t enough for us to just survive, limping along, playing business as usual while things get worse and worse. If that’s the shape we give to God, then someday we must become too weak—too poor, too hungry, too sick—to defend ourselves. Then we’ll be wiped out.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“All struggles Are essentially power struggles, And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“All struggles Are essentially power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“I didn’t know how bad it would be or when it would come. But everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn’t believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower