A Lillian Smith Reader Quotes

“The Movement thinks of itself as a valid expression of the democratic way; and its leaders remember that democracy is not a system, that it has no ideology; it is a way of life, a Tao, a continuous series of specific attempts to protect every individual's freedom to grow, to ask questions, to work, to explore inner and outer space, to create the New Thing and the New Relationship.”
― Margaret Rose Gladney, A Lillian Smith Reader

“But modern man is embarrassed about this need to be related; he keeps wishing he were solid and self-sufficient and tries to behave as if he is. And holding on to this false confidence, and refusing faith, he cuts himself off from what he need not do without - almost as if to convince himself that he can do so. Being armored in arrogance he finds it hard to genuflect to an unproved God, and impossible to relate to Him. How strange! For we all cling to meanings we cannot prove just as we cling to love and hope, and to art whose importance to the human being in us, thought unproved, we are somehow sure of.”
― Margaret Rose Gladney, A Lillian Smith Reader

“Read it: you see within its pages so many open spaces left for growth. The people can do wrong, yes; we have in the past and will again; but our Constitution holds within it the potentials for doing right and the machinery for correcting our errors - and they will be corrected as soon as enough of us realize that change is needed.”
― Margaret Rose Gladney, A Lillian Smith Reader

“There is no person, no group of people, no nation, that does not make grave mistakes. The test is: can they rectify their mistake? A man's honor becomes involved in how he meets this test; his sense of responsibility for the future of his children and the human race becomes involved.”
― Margaret Rose Gladney, A Lillian Smith Reader

“I have been called "brave"; I am not brave. I am afraid, terribly afraid that democracy and Christianity and perhaps the world itself will be destroyed if we who believe in love and brotherhood and children growing do not begin quickly to live our beliefs.”
― Margaret Rose Gladney, A Lillian Smith Reader

“I believe the white man's problem is a complicated thing centered at the core of our culture but that we could change the whole picture within a year or two if we wanted to and felt an urgent necessity to do so (I say in detail how I think this could be done); that I do not think the race problem is "economic" but that it reaches down to men's fundamental needs and dream and values. I think our problem is not so much one of false beliefs but of a profound lack of any belief at all. [...] I talk about the symbolic significance of civil rights and why it is such dangerous strategy for us to delay and delay giving these rights once and for all to our people.”
― Margaret Rose Gladney, A Lillian Smith Reader