Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Colson Whitehead

Quote by Colson Whitehead

“When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but no one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them.”

Quote by Colson Whitehead

Book:The Underground Railroad
Create image

Work

The Underground Railroad

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is an American novelist known for his distinctive literary style and profound insights into historical themes. His works cover a range of topics from slavery to modern urban life, with his 'New York Trilogy' and 'The Underground Railroad' being particularly notable. more

You May Also Like

“If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace. But that which you now say we must live on is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew the thickest and the timber was the best. Had we kept that, we might have done the things you ask. But it is too late. The white man has the country which we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die.”

NativeGenocideUs HistoryAboriginalNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst People
Author:Ten Bears Comanche Nation
Create image

“American influence in Latin America has been at the disposal of whoever has wished to destroy the heritage of Spain and Portugal (whose daughter Brazil became an independent Empire under a Portuguese Prince in 1822). It has been a long hard struggle, with American-backed forces generally triumphing in the end. But the endurance of the Catholic Iberian tradition may be seen by the fact that the battle is not over yet.”

CatholicCatholicismU S HistoryCatholic History
Book:Puritan's Empire
Create image

“One story that circulated about (U.S. Minister to Russia Charles S.) Todd concerned his conversation with a lady-in-waiting at an Imperial reception in the Winter Palace. In his bad French with a Kentucky accent, he mispronounced the word for year, so that an explanation of his travels came out: "I was an ass in Paris, part of an ass in London, almost an ass in Germany, and I am two asses here." To which the lady reportedly responded, "And you will be an ass wherever you go.”

RussiaDiplomacyU S History
Book:Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867
Create image

“You have driven me from the East to this place, and I have been here two thousand years or more. [...] My friends, if you took me away from this land it would be very hard for me. I wish to die in this land, I wish to be an old man here. [...] I have not wished to give even a part of it to the Great Father [the President]. Though he were to give me a million dollars I would not give him this land. [...] When people want to slaughter cattle they drive them along until they get them to a corral, and then they slaughter them. So it was with us. [...] My children have been exterminated; my brother has been killed.”

GenocideUs HistoryNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst PeoplesPoncas
Author:Standing Bear
Create image

“The white men in the East are like birds. They are hatching out their eggs every year, and there is not room enough in the East and they must go elsewhere; and they come west, as you have seen them coming for the last few years. And they are still coming, and will come until they overrun all of this country; and you can't prevent it. [...] Everything is decided in Washington by the majority, and these people come out west and see that the Indians have a big body of land they are not using, and they say we want the land.”

GenocideUs HistoryNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst Peoples
Author:George Crook
Create image

“Photos have emerged establishing that David William Ferrie had been in the same Civil Air Patrol unit as Lee Harvey Oswald and apparently Ferrie had met with Oswald during the summer of 1963. Ferrie was extremely against the Communistic philosophy. He was a member of the anti-Castro Cuban Revolutionary group, and was dubbed the master of intrigue. Once when he gave an anti-Kennedy speech to an American veterans’ group in New Orleans regarding the Bay of Pigs Invasion, his rant against the President was so belligerent that he was asked to leave the podium. On February 22, 1967, Ferrie mysteriously died of a stroke. The strange part concerning his death was that he left behind two suicide notes and then died of natural causes. In the days preceding his death, he had told friends that he was a dead man. Ferrie was only one of many who were somehow connected to Kennedy’s death and who later died in a mysterious way.”

Sea StoriesU S HistoryKennedy Assassination
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"
Create image

“A theory held that an anti-Castro group was behind the assassination…. Sylvia Orenstein, who was born in New York City on 22nd July, 1921, promoted this theory while taking evening classes at Brooklyn College. The marriage to her professor, James Meagher, accounted for her name change. As Sylvia Meagher, she became a research analyst at the UN’s World Health Organization. Her book, “Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report After the Fact,” published in 1967, supported this widely held theory. In her book, she expressed that she was not convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a lone gunman. Her conclusion was that the Warren Commission had attempted to cover-up important details of the actual people behind the assassination. In 1980, Meagher co-authored another book named “Master Index to the John F. Kennedy Assassination Investigations.” Meagher continued to believe that John F. Kennedy had been killed by Anti-Castro exiles until her death at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City, at the age of 67, on January 14, 1989.”

U S HistoryKennedy AssassinationConspiricy Theories
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"
Create image