Randall Jarrell Quotes

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity.

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold onto the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own system of repression.

The black knows his place, and if not, I'll tell him his place.

I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.

Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and values. Everything fell apart as soon as we put on those maroon polyester gym suits.

What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

I think I've always had a certain amount of skepticism of this whole 'shut up and smile' theory. I haven't ever swallowed that pill so easily, although I tried.

I think it is the easiest mentality for a human being to be either colonized or to colonize. The structure of either the slave or the master seems to be the simplest and the most relaxing one to slip into. Either you are a slave, and you don't have to think for yourself, or you're a master, and you don't have to work for yourself.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

He loves his bonds who, when the first are broke, Submits his neck into a second yoke.

It is important to recognize and politics positive thinking is often the slaves' virtue - something that people do to con themselves about the burden and change being placed upon them.

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.

Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave.

I remember being taught my place.

Oppression is more easily endured than insult.

It is impossible for white men to live with the coloured races without adopting a conviction that…they have the right to command the services of the less civilized.

In the South they don't mind how close I get, so long as I don't get too big. In the North they don't mind how big I get, so long as I don't get too close.

A Sudra [lowest caste untouchable], though emancipated by his master, is not released from servitude; since that is innate in him, who can set him free from it?