Claudia Rankine Quotes

And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.

Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it's you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating.

I've been compared to people since the beginning. When you're starting out, you need a comparison so people will understand you right away.

You would be amazed at who people are once you know yourself.

Don't wait for people to tell you who you are. Show them.

Power is knowing your past.

But what I thought, and what I still think, and always will, is that she saw me. Nobody else has ever seen me — me, Jenny Gluckstein — like that. Not my parents, not Julian, not even Meena. Love is one thing — recognition is something else.

I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite object of helping the people, especially those of my race, to know, to understand, and to realize themselves.

When I talk about feminism and what I think the women's movement needs more of, it's not to detract from anything going on - I think everything going on is fantastic - but there's this missing element. I think we could learn from our detractors a little bit because I feel like they have a plan, a better understanding of things than we necessarily do. You can't change things if you don't understand the other people involved. And if you don't understand yourself, you'll never change.

I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

I think of myself as a human being first and foremost, and secondly as a person whose profession is acting. If people want to make that into something more or less, that's up to them.

It's odd to look out there and see a bunch of Mini-Mes," says Williams. "You're wondering what possessed them to do such a thing . . . It sort of does a reverse psychology on you. You'd think you'd be like 'Hey, all these people want to look like me. I feel pretty cool.' But actually it makes you feel more self aware and I'm not really fond of that.

I think the hardest part to get to is that point of asking for help or reaching out to other people and being honest with yourself.

I think, over the course of one's lifetime, there are always certain core elements that are intriguing to you, and you take different looks as you get older, but it's something you keep coming back to. I've always been interested in the relationship between vulnerability and control. That's something that's a big thing for people, whoever they are, no matter how old you are. I think at different times, you're more aware than others.

Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.

People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night.

We are all the time, from our childhood, trying to lay the blame upon something outside ourselves. We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" But why should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that.

I think the most clear, direct way to empowerment is to really know yourself and to really use your voice and to not be afraid of other people's reactions.

People can portray me anyway they want because I don’t give a damn… But don’t you analyze me and don’t you tell me what I am until you get close enough to understand what I am. Then you can make an analysis of me. But don’t you dare do it until then.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

Distance is where people get really confused. If you stand really far away from someone you're like, "That's not me. I'm so far away from that person. That person is so different from me." It's easy to forget that people - refugees from Syria, for example - are exactly like us.

So many times, we take things to heart and that eats us up, and we think it over and over again with work and our personal life. But most of the time, it is not personal. It may have nothing to do with you but, instead, what the other person is going through in their life.

I think it just came with me evolving as a person and me understanding that it's not right to judge or to say anything derogatory about other people, especially if I don't know them.

I do definitely get boxed into this #BlackGirlMagic social activist category. But it makes me think, "Well, maybe people are able to start thinking about that concept earlier and will hopefully be inspired to delve deeper into it and research it more." I think that's just how the media works. It's just very good at compartmentalizing human beings.