Wesley Morris Quotes

What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, 'Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't dislike these people any more.' But by the strangest coincidence, they haven't taken away the injustice; the laws are still on the books.

It's usually human drama that carries with it issues of race or class that attracts me. That was certainly the case with 'No Crossover.'

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

All the films I've done have had a secret commentary on stereotypical mentalities.

I suppose I'm intrigued with the bad traits of society, because I'm a part of society, and the bad traits pose the dangerous questions for our future.

I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.

We are very fortunate to live in this country, but at the same time, the reason the forces are so much more destructive here is because they are faceless.

HATE, even if it's making money. is an underground movie, that's how it was made. It's a film about police brutality in the largest sense, it's about the whole of society and not just about the hood.

One of my favourite films is called 'Lacombe Lucien,' directed by Louis Malle. The lead character in that film, like the lead characters in many '70s and '80s films, has a moral ambiguity to him.

When you look at a film like 'The Ides of March' or 'Good Night, and Good Luck' even, those are really contained pictures.

It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves.

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

Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

You ask me, brother, why am I in here. Brother, why are you not in here?

I found everywhere now the most direct antagonism between the two classes. The whites charge generally that the negro is idle, and at the bottom of all local disturbances, and credit him with most of the vices and very few of the virtues of humanity. The negroes charge that the whites are revengeful, and intend to cheat the laboring class at every opportunity, and credit them with neither good purposes nor kindly hearts..

It started getting too crazy with 'Earth A.D.' The concepts started becoming too brutal and violent. It was less about fiction and more about the real world, the past, present, and future. I think a lot of people got freaked out by that.

I define 'social thriller' as thriller/horror movies where the ultimate villain is society.

Not all cops are bad, but this kind of harassment has been going on for years in the ghetto.

You know what should be banned? Stuff that's whack. The world is controversial. The world is classist. The world is racist.

People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination.

I've always thought that 'Dear White People' should live on as a TV show, so I'll leave it at that.

It's kind of almost not fair that certain people don't get the opportunities that others get just because of where they are born or where they were brought up.

My only crime is breathing and existing.

Awkwardness comes from the realization that, when you look around the world, it's difficult to identify anyone who isn't either the victim or the beneficiary of injustice.