Top 28 Quotes by Peter Abrahams

About Peter Abrahams

These are some quotes by South African author Peter Abrahams Novelist, who was born on March 3, 1919.

My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.

My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.

Peter Abrahams

Positive social awareness among the South African educated half-caste is zero. Teaching is a mechanical job. The best way of earning a living.

Positive social awareness among the South African educated half-caste is zero. Teaching is a mechanical job. The best way of earning a living.

Peter Abrahams

Marxism, communism, socialism - the ideologies - did not have the automatic answers to the problem of the relations between the lighter and darker races of mankind. They did not even have an answer to anti-Semitism.

Peter Abrahams

My mother went to work in the homes of white folk, usually living in and looking after their children. The money was small.

My mother went to work in the homes of white folk, usually living in and looking after their children. The money was small.

Peter Abrahams

Most of the black women who lived in the lower end of Vrededorp came from the countryside and were there to be near their menfolk who worked in the mines. They spoke neither English nor Afrikaans.

Most of the black women who lived in the lower end of Vrededorp came from the countryside and were there to be near their menfolk who worked in the mines. They spoke neither English nor Afrikaans.

Peter Abrahams

Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it in South Africa.

Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it in South Africa.

Peter Abrahams

A man can submit today in order to resist tomorrow. My submission had been such. And because I had not been free to show my real feeling, to voice my true thoughts, my submission had bred bitterness and anger. And there were nearly ten million others who had submitted with equal anger and bitterness.

Peter Abrahams

The only places where I have found that simple human dignity, that respect for the other man, and the gracious feel of tolerance and humanity have not been either among the heroes of the class-struggle or the 'thinking men' but among my simple 'backward' people.

Peter Abrahams

The London I entered was a great bustling metropolitan city at war, an imperial power fighting to hold on to that empire. And the teeming colonial subjects of that empire did not, on the whole, want England to lose that war, but they also did not want the empire to emerge unchanged from it. This, for very many of us, was the hard dilemma.

Peter Abrahams

I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me.

I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me.

Peter Abrahams

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