Quote

Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie.

June Jordan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

June Jordan
Age: 65 †
Born: 1936
Born: July 9
Died: 2002
Died: June 14
Essayist
Lgbtiq+ Rights Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Harlem
New York
June Millicent Jordan
Doe
Inside
Pie
Side
Begun
Trouble
Town
Sides
Absolutes
Middle
Absolute
Originate
Start
Towns
Homemade
Understand
Somewhere
Cherry
Seems
Americans
Cherries

More quotes by June Jordan

Image
Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.
June Jordan
Image
A democratic state is not proven by the welfare of the strong but by the welfare of the weak.
June Jordan
Image
As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth - whatever the truth may be - that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.
June Jordan
Image
What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart?
June Jordan
Image
Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.
June Jordan
Image
To tell the truth is to become beautiful.
June Jordan
Image
But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.
June Jordan
Image
That a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.
June Jordan
Image
Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.
June Jordan
Image
... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.
June Jordan
Image
Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.
June Jordan
Image
My father was both the person who gave me reason to learn how to fight and the one who taught me the basics of fighting. He would tell me that if it was a big fight, it would probably be uneven, it wouldn't be fair
June Jordan
Image
Reproductive choice is not some trendy item to toss or keep around the house. If you cannot get an education or a job, if you cannot choose what will or will not happen with your own body, then what freedom do you have?
June Jordan
Image
Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?
June Jordan
Image
The United States Supreme Court, once a reliable if ultimate recourse for progressive and even revolutionary grievances, has become a retrograde wellspring for enormous economic and social distress.
June Jordan
Image
To begin is no more agony than opening your hand.
June Jordan
Image
What's important about poetry in the context of leadership is that most of the time, power has to do with dominance. But poetry is never about dominance. Poetry is powerful but it cannot even aspire to dominate anyone. It means making a connection. That's what it means.
June Jordan
Image
If any of us hopes to survive, she must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.
June Jordan
Image
In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage none of these is normal.
June Jordan
Image
There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth.
June Jordan