The London I entered was a great bustling metropolitan city at war, an imperial power fighting to hold on to that empire. And the teeming colonial subjects of that empire did not, on the whole, want England to lose that war, but they also did not want the empire to emerge unchanged from it. This, for very many of us, was the hard dilemma. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
There is a qualitative difference between being a minority and being a majority. Majorities are stronger under psychological pressure because numbers count. But only if they are aware of it. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
We do not ask the right questions when we are young, so we miss the important answers. Now it is too late to ask, too late for the illuminating answers, and the unanswered questions haunt us for a lifetime. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
My mother went to work in the homes of white folk, usually living in and looking after their children. The money was small. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
All my life had been dominated by a sign, often invisible but no less real for that, which said: ‘Reserved for Europeans Only.’ Peter Abrahams Read Quote
Positive social awareness among the South African educated half-caste is zero. Teaching is a mechanical job. The best way of earning a living. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
The only places where I have found that simple human dignity, that respect for the other man, and the gracious feel of tolerance and humanity have not been either among the heroes of the class-struggle or the ‘thinking men’ but among my simple ‘backward’ people. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
In the Caribbean islands, especially in Jamaica, have I found a country similar to South Africa plus the racial freedom I had sought so long. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight ‘all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad’ attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gestures of even my friends among the whites were suspect, so I had to go or be forever lost. Peter Abrahams Read Quote
