Kendra Bean > Kendra's Quotes

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe

“As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen such a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath. She felt that she should be insulted by such a look as was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted. She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face. It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, and high forehead and the wide-set eyes.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“America is supposed to be a place where you can better yourself, your family, and your community. But this is only possible if you have a stable home.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“It’s easy to convince yourself that the past has no bearing on how we live today. But the Abolition of Slavery Act was introduced in the British Empire in 1833, less than two hundred years ago. Given that the British began trading in African slaves in 1562, slavery as a British institution existed for much longer than it has currently been abolished – over 270 years. Generation after generation of black lives stolen, families torn apart, communities split. Thousands of people being born into slavery and dying enslaved, never knowing what it might mean to be free. Entire lives sustaining constant brutality and violence, living in never-ending fear. Generation after generation of white wealth amassed from the profits of slavery, compounded, seeping into the fabric of British society.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“We don’t live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise in wilful ignorance.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“The idea of white privilege forces white people who aren’t actively racist to confront their own complicity in its continuing existence. White privilege is dull, grinding complacency. It is par for the course in a world in which drastic race inequality is responded to with a shoulder shrug, considered just the norm.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“White middle class people can be particularly calculated with their discomfort.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

“Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world, which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“Donald’s problems are accumulating because the maneuvering required to solve them, or to pretend they don’t exist, has become more complicated, requiring many more people to execute the cover-ups. Donald is completely unprepared to solve his own problems or adequately cover his tracks. After all, the systems were set up in the first place to protect him from his own weaknesses, not help him negotiate the wider world. The walls of his very expensive and well-guarded padded cell are starting to disintegrate. The people with access to him are weaker than Donald is, more craven, but just as desperate. Their futures are directly dependent on his success and favor. They either fail to see or refuse to believe that their fate will be the same as that of anyone who pledged loyalty to him in the past.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“Donald has always been able to get away with making blanket statements (“I know more about [fill in the blank] than anybody, believe me” or the other iteration, “Nobody knows more about [fill in the blank] than me”); he’s been allowed to riff about nuclear weapons, trade with China, and other things about which he knows nothing; he’s gone essentially unchallenged when touting the efficacy of drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 that have not been tested or engaging in an absurd, revisionist history in which he’s never made a mistake and nothing is his fault.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“If what he was doing during the 2016 campaign hadn’t worked, he would have kept doing it anyway, because lying, playing to the lowest common denominator, cheating, and sowing division are all he knows. He is as incapable of adjusting to changing circumstances as he is of becoming “presidential.” He did tap into a certain bigotry and inchoate rage, which he’s always been good at doing. The full-page screed he paid to publish in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death wasn’t about his deep concern for the rule of law; it was an easy opportunity for him to take on a deeply serious topic that was very important to the city while sounding like an authority in the influential and prestigious pages of the Gray Lady. It was unvarnished racism meant to stir up racial animosity in a city already seething with it. All five boys, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam, were subsequently cleared, proven innocent via incontrovertible DNA evidence. To this day, however, Donald insists that they were guilty—yet another example of his inability to drop a preferred narrative even when it’s contradicted by established fact.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“The opioid crisis is, among other things, a parable about the awesome capability of private industry to subvert public institutions.”
― Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

“Sadly, Truman’s social-reformist vision floundered amidst fierce criticism and suspicion. Fearing that such a socialist move was part of a communist plot, the Republican-controlled Congress rejected his proposal in 1946.”
― Elinor Cleghorn, Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World