Quote

I first understood the changes that were necessary in this world, because the waiters in the restaurant, when I cried, used to say, Leave her on the hillside to die. She's only a girl baby. I think they said it somewhat as a joke, maybe not, but it made me understand that being born female in this world was very different from being born male.

Grace Lee Boggs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Grace Lee Boggs
Age: 100 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 27
Died: 2015
Died: October 5
Activist
Author
Civil Rights Advocate
Non-Fiction Writer
Politician
Writer
Providence
Rhode Island
Ria Stone
Firsts
Baby
Joke
First
Leave
Male
Hillside
Different
Maybe
Males
Waiters
Made
Dies
Jokes
Waiter
Think
Understand
Changes
Restaurant
Thinking
Born
Female
Somewhat
World
Girl
Necessary
Cried
Used
Understood
Restaurants

More quotes by Grace Lee Boggs

Image
One of the things that's very important, when you're an activist and an organizer like me, is to understand that when things happen of that nature, some people become immobilized and other people begin to find solutions. And Detroit is the kind of city where we begin to find solutions.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
Wage work is disappearing. I didn't make the jobs disappear, but they have disappeared. And people are forced to be looking for other alternatives.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think we’re not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
New York has become almost a third-world country. When I was growing up it was mostly a Euro-American country. And it wasn't until LaGuardia was elected in 1933 that Italians were even considered Americans. We're at a great transition point in terms of population, demographics, and what it means to be a human being.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think that at some level, people recognize that growing our economy is destroying us. It's destroying us as human beings, it's destroying our planet.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
The Vietnam War was taking place, which was raising all sorts of questions in the United States, and it was forcing Asian-Americans to stop thinking of themselves as model minorities and to identify themselves more with world revolution, which was very important in my development.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
Some people are afraid of gentrification, but what I see is young people want to live in a different world. And they see possibilities here. They see that rents are relatively cheap compared to places like New York and California.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
We're at a great transition point in terms of population, demographics, and what it means to be a human being.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
It's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
We have to think in a very different sense than the way we think now. We think in terms of quick fixes, that solutions will come out of a few protest demonstrations, and calling upon the government to do something. And we can keep trying to do that, and it won't work.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
Well, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
A rebellion is something that is developing as an explosion coming out of the righteous grievances of a community of people.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think when every household in almost every neighborhood can produce what it needs without going through the market, we're going to undergo a huge change in the elevation of the community to the center of the city, and the elimination of the factory.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think people are really looking for some way whereby we can grow our souls rather than our economy.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
I think we have to understand that the nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
The nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.
Grace Lee Boggs
Image
In every crisis, people do not respond like a school of fish. Some people become immobilized. Some people become very angry, some commit suicide, and other people begin to find solutions. And visionary organizers look at those people, recognize them and encourage them, and they become leaders of the future.
Grace Lee Boggs