Latest Randall Robinson Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery. The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

  Randall Robinson

  Men, People, Justice

• Something is very, very wrong with American culture. The signs are everywhere. I think the country is in almost terminal descent. The business class is combined with the evangelicals. And I think the evangelicals want to provoke an immense global disaster to precipitate the second coming of Christ. So they are very happy about what we're doing to Iraq - and the menace we present now for Syria and for Iran - because they think that the apocalypse is an important thing to get into so that they can see vindicated their most literal interpretation of the Bible.

  Randall Robinson

  Country, Thinking, Important

• Black people in America have to, for their own protection, develop a defense mechanism, and I just grew terribly tired of it. When you sustain that kind of affront, and sustain it and sustain it and sustain it, something happens to you. You try to steer a course in American society that's not self-destructive. But America is a country that inflicts injury. It does not like to see anything that comes in response, and accuses one of anger as if it were an unnatural response. For anyone who is not white in America, the affronts are virtually across the board.

  Randall Robinson

  Country, Tired, People

• I got a chance to be in a society where the barriers between classes - social and economic - are not insuperable, where money is not everything all the time.

  Randall Robinson

  Class, Chance, Economic

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I wanted to write and think. Activism is a displacing kind of passion.

  Randall Robinson

  Passion, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• We all have to die, and I preferred to have just one death. It seems to me that to suffer insult without response is to die many deaths.

  Randall Robinson

  Suffering, Insult, Response

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I think people involved with institutions find it harder to know the time to go than the time to come.

  Randall Robinson

  Thinking, People, Institutions

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• Whites have more than eleven times the net worth or wealth of African Americans. They make greater salaries. Our unemployment rate is twice theirs. You look at the prison system and who that's chewing up.

  Randall Robinson

  African American, Salary, Unemployment

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I never met a white person till I was a grown man. I never went to school with a white till I was twenty-six years old, at Harvard Law School. The insult of segregation was searing and unforgettable. It has left a great scar, and will be with me for the rest of my life.

  Randall Robinson

  School, Men, Years

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I can't think of a more mediocre human talent than George Bush. He obviously is a product of family advantage, and he's the worst American President of all time.

  Randall Robinson

  Thinking, President, Talent

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• People need their history like they need air and food.

  Randall Robinson

  Air, People, Needs

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• You plant twenty coconut trees over here, and twenty coconut trees over there, and you water this batch and don't water that batch. Of the batch you water, nineteen will survive and one will die. Of the batch you don't water, nineteen will die and one will survive.

  Randall Robinson

  Water, Tree, Twenties

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

  Randall Robinson

  Men, America, Justice

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• Every people, in order to remain healthy and strong, has to have a grasp of its foundation story. Culture is a chrysalis - it is protective, it takes care of you. That's what cultures are for. You cannot rob a people of language, culture, mother, father, the value of their labor - all of that - without doing vast damage to those people.

  Randall Robinson

  Mother, Strong, Father

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery.

  Randall Robinson

  Eight, People, Community

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• Bush people didn't like him, and they never liked him. They didn't like him because they don't like democracy. They like you to have an election, but they like you to elect the people they want you to elect.

  Randall Robinson

  People, Democracy, Want

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. The country with one-twentieth of the world's population has one-fourth of those in prison.

  Randall Robinson

  Country, Prison Population, Two

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• Democracy requires that if you who don't like the outcome of elections you have to tolerate it and then pursue your interest the next time around.

  Randall Robinson

  Democracy, Next, Outcomes

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I don't know of any situation where you're going to have an officeholder in a country of eight million people who's cut off at the knees by the most powerful force in this world and who can still make it fly.

  Randall Robinson

  Country, Powerful, Cutting

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I've opposed black regimes and white regimes, leftist regimes and rightist regimes. I'm close to Aristide because I have respect for him, but all that is beside the point.

  Randall Robinson

  White, Black, Regimes

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• Reagan was conservative, but he didn't approach global management with an unbending religious zeal.

  Randall Robinson

  Religious, Conservative, Management

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I've always thought I had pretty good instincts for people. There is a short list of people I've worked with over my career with whom I've not been able to distinguish easily between the public persona and the real private person.

  Randall Robinson

  Real, Careers, People

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I've never had any trouble opposing people I've been close to. I've never worried about offending or bothering people I feel strongly about.

  Randall Robinson

  Offending, People, Trouble

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• I'm aware that because America is so powerful - with its tentacles reaching out to the world - one doesn't escape it by leaving. This is the most dangerous and disturbing time in my life.

  Randall Robinson

  Powerful, America, Leaving

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.

• Americans don't bother to notice anybody else in the world.

  Randall Robinson

  World, Bother

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.