Octavia E. Butler Quotes

Our family were outsiders, and I've always had a sense of the outsider, the underdog, and a strong sense of justice towards people who are excluded.

I usually play disenfranchised youth.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Society is better off without certain people.

If I feel any marginalisation, it's because the things that concern me aren't so important to other people.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

It's funny how people who ain't never been down there can think that America is so fair and that we should be alright. It's funny that the people who have their foot on our neck are telling us, 'Get up. What's wrong with you?'

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

The biggest abuses in society happen when people are not able to communicate and not able to connect.

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

If you try to smooth out society with a hot iron, you're liable to drive out all talent.

If you are on the wrong side of society you can’t win.

I value what I learned from being cast in the margins and what that felt like.

I hate systemic oppression in America.

I have my privileges, but I do feel like at every turn there is such resistance. Things seem to take so much longer for me to do. I have to say things 10 times instead of once. I have to knock on 10 different doors instead of two. For everything. All the time. I feel like I'm not taken seriously.

Discrimination will impair democracy.

We have never had a society that was truly just. Some groups have always benefited at the expense of others.

I know what it's like to think the system has left you behind.

That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.

What people don't know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system.

People who don't fit the mold are treated differently than those who do.

Discrimination is alive and soaring.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

The feeling of being an underdog, not belonging, is very much me. You harbour a little feeling of resentment towards the 'upper dog'.