Waris Dirie Quotes

The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

But what's the alternative? What's the alternative to pumping out a unit every nine months? Pointless careerism? Pointless careerism, putting on a man tailored suit and shoulder pads and imitating all the worst behavior of men? Is this the noblest thing that women can think of?

Time is the wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

This is approximately the way Christendom relates to the essentially Christian, the unconditioned. After seventeen, eighteen detours and running all around someone finally has his finite existence assured, and then we receive a sermon about Seek first the kingdom of God. Is this sobriety or is this intoxication? p. 112

It's not my liking for guns, what about the NRA? We all have the rights to bear arms, I have that, I have that same right as you do. Just because I'm black doesn't mean I shouldn't have a gun; I legally own guns.

I encouraged the leadership in its time of weakness. Now that they are strong, I'm allowed not to applaud. If a Palestinian state is established, I will be in the opposition. That's my natural place.

The Mississippi and its paddle boats, and the rivers of Bengal and their gleaming steamers evoked a similar atmosphere of romance, of long, song-filled voyages, high winds and lonely sunsets.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.

The wise man who has charge of governing the empire should know the cause of disorder before he can put it in order. Unless he knows its cause, he cannot regulate it.

Don't disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand.

My wife gave birth to a baby girl soon after the Olympics and I named her 'Fatuma' after you.

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

Who sits alone by the bright window?
My shadow and I, only we two.
But the lamp burns out, there is darkness.
Even my shadow forsakes me.
Alas, alas!
I am forlorn!

In each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first, and those which follow after, and only then approach the thing itself.

[I]n a free society each individual has a responsibility towards the beliefs of his society—a responsibility on which all the rights and duties of citizenship are founded.