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Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

Anthropologist

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Famous Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

“Don’t you know you can’t git de best of no woman in de talkin’ game? Her tongue is all de weapon a woman got,” George Thomas chided Gene. “She could have had mo’ sense, but she told God no, she’d ruther take it out in hips. So God give her her ruthers. She got plenty hips, plenty mouf and no brains.” “Oh, yes, womens is got sense too,” Mathilda Moseley jumped in. “But they got too much sense to go ‘round braggin’ about it like y’all do. De lady people always got de advantage of mens because God fixed it dat way.”

“I am the kind of a woman that likes to move on mentally from point to point, and I like for my man to be there way ahead of me. Then if he is strong and honest, it goes on from there. Good looks are not essential, just extra added attraction.”

“So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.”

“Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but in the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? . . . The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. . . . If you are under the impression that every white man is an Edison, just look around a bit.”

“Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slaver y is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.”