Welcome to our collection of Alice Walker quotes, a celebration of the wisdom and insight of one of the most influential writers of our time. Alice Walker, an esteemed American novelist, poet, and activist, is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, a timeless exploration of race, gender, and the human spirit. Throughout her prolific career, Walker’s words have served as beacons of inspiration, guiding readers towards a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Walker’s writing is characterized by its raw honesty, unflinching courage, and profound empathy. Through her keen observations and powerful prose, she sheds light on the complexities of human relationships, the struggles of marginalized communities, and the quest for justice and liberation. Her words resonate with authenticity and sincerity, challenging readers to confront uncomfortable truths and envision a more compassionate and just society. As we delve into the profound insights offered by Alice Walker, let us embark on a journey of self-discovery, enlightenment, and empowerment. Explore the quotes below, and feel free to use them to adorn your spaces, inspire your days, and ignite your passions.
I think the War on Terror is really absurd, especially coming from a country that is founded on terrorism. Alice Walker
In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence. Alice Walker
We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it. Alice Walker
I wanted in my lifetime to vote for a radical Native American woman, since my vision of any future that we might have is that it will be led by women and older women. Alice Walker
So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding. Alice Walker
I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have. Alice Walker
Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge. Alice Walker
I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve. Alice Walker
Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything. Alice Walker
This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy. Alice Walker
Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself. Alice Walker
At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything. Alice Walker
We must, I believe, start teaching our children the sanity of nonviolence much earlier. Alice Walker
Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom. Alice Walker
I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it. Alice Walker
When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their ‘democratic’ right to vote. Alice Walker
I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine. Alice Walker
If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it. Alice Walker
Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister. Alice Walker
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. Alice Walker
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. Alice Walker
You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty. Alice Walker
I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame. Alice Walker
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for. Alice Walker
I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too. Alice Walker
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. Alice Walker
I’m the most stubborn person I know. Alice Walker
My interest in creating anything is that it be useful. Alice Walker
Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also. Alice Walker
For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended. Alice Walker
Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet. Alice Walker
We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid. Alice Walker
People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don’t. Alice Walker
If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows – pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music… That would be so much cheaper than bombs. Alice Walker
I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don’t understand what is going on. Alice Walker
I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America. Alice Walker
Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be. Alice Walker
The most important question in the world is, ‘Why is the child crying?’ Alice Walker
The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print. Alice Walker
I love the women’s movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population. Alice Walker
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. Alice Walker
‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding. Alice Walker
Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? Alice Walker
For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse. Alice Walker
All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world. Alice Walker
The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout. Alice Walker
I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. Alice Walker
Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me. Alice Walker
I have never felt that the one thing that I am ‘known for’ is what I am. Alice Walker
I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you. Alice Walker
We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. Alice Walker
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful. Alice Walker
Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry. Alice Walker
Women have to summon up courage to fulfill dormant dreams. Alice Walker
How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names. Alice Walker
I met Howard Zinn in 1961, my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over. Alice Walker
Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it. Alice Walker
I’m not lesbian; I’m not bisexual; I’m not straight. I’m just curious. Alice Walker
Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. Alice Walker
There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life. Alice Walker
I just feel that ‘The Color Purple,’ which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors. Alice Walker
I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States’ response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been. Alice Walker
I gave my archive to Emory University because there’s a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he’s the editor. Alice Walker
I don’t generally read reviews. Alice Walker
I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty. Alice Walker
Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it. Alice Walker
For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged. Alice Walker
Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us. Alice Walker
What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears. Alice Walker
My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me. Alice Walker
As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening. Alice Walker
If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were. Alice Walker
It is important to remember yourself. Alice Walker
Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness. Alice Walker
One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe. Alice Walker
Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful. Alice Walker
I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly. Alice Walker
One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate. Alice Walker
We should not look down on our first ancestors. Alice Walker
Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. Alice Walker
It is natural to want to have a future. Alice Walker
I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything. Alice Walker
I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother. Alice Walker
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. Alice Walker
I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart. Alice Walker
Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities. Alice Walker
In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own. Alice Walker
People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. Alice Walker
We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone. Alice Walker
There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation. Alice Walker
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. Alice Walker
My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean? Alice Walker
I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, ‘black feminist’ does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it’s just… womanish. Alice Walker
My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. Alice Walker
Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home. Alice Walker
On a spiritual level, it’s as though with my sighted eye I see what’s before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden. It’s illuminated life more than darkened it. Alice Walker
What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore. Alice Walker
In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married – we became an interracial couple. Alice Walker
Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough? Alice Walker
Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. Alice Walker
