41+ Toni Cade Bambara Quotes On Education, Culture And Identity

Toni Cade Bambara was an American author, filmmaker, and social activist. She was best known for her short stories, novels, and essays that explored African-American culture and the civil rights movement. She was an influential figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and her work is widely studied in literature classes. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Toni Cade Bambara on education, love, culture.

Top 10 Toni Cade Bambara Quotes

1. The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible
2. Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I've seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges.
3. (M)aybe we too busy being flowers or fairies or strawberries instead of something honest and worthy of respect . . . you know . . . like being people.
4. TAKE HEART TO FLAT OUT DECIDE TO BE WELL AND STRIDE INTO THE FUTURE, SANE AND WHOLE
5. The only proper mask to wear in life is your own damn face.
6. The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible.
7. When you dream, you dialogue with aspects of yourself that normally are not with you in the daytime and you discover that you know a great deal more than you thought you did.
8. She [my mother] gave me permission to wonder, to dawdle, to daydream.
9. The dream is real, my friends. The failure to make it work is the unreality.
10. Reappraise the past, re-evaluate where we've been, clarify where we are, and predict or anticipate where we are headed. . . .

Toni Cade Bambara Short Quotes

• An artist represents an oppressed people and makes revolution irresistible.
• And what is religion, you might ask. It's a technology of living.
• Revolution begins with the self, in the self.
• Medication without explanation is obscene.
• It's a dismally lonely business, writing.
• The story is a piece of work. The novel is a way of life.
• Old folks are the nation.
• Take away the miseries and you take away some folks' reason for living.
• Not all speed is movement.
• One monkey don't stop no show. Not one, not six. The struggle continues.

Toni Cade Bambara Famous Quotes And Sayings

For people sometimes believed that it was safer to live with complaints, was necessary to cooperate with grief, was all right to become an accomplice in self-ambush... Take heart to flat out decide to be well and stride into the future sane and whole. — Toni Cade Bambara

Our lives preserved. How it was; and how it be. Passing it along in the relay. That is what I work to do: to produce stories that save our lives. — Toni Cade Bambara

When we ever invited the beast to dinner he didn't come in and swipe the napkins and start taking notes on the tablecloth 'bout how to take over the whole house? — Toni Cade Bambara

My responsibility to myself, my neighbors, my family and the human family is to try to tell the truth. — Toni Cade Bambara

What can defeat greed, technological superiority, and legal lawlessness ... is discipline, consciousness, and unity. — Toni Cade Bambara

I tend to agree that celibacy for a time is worth considering, for sex is dirty if all it means is winning a man, conquering a woman, beating someone out of something, abusing each other's dignity in order to prove that I am a man, I am a woman. — Toni Cade Bambara

I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order to extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it. — Toni Cade Bambara

We have not been scuffling in this waste - howling wilderness for the right to be stupid. All this waste. — Toni Cade Bambara

People have to be given permission to write, and they have to be given space to breathe and stumble. They have to be given time to develop and to reveal what they can do. — Toni Cade Bambara

There are times ... when any visitor - in person, by phone, by mail - is an intruder, a burglar, a space hogger, an oxygen taker, a chaos maker, a conflict inducer, a mood chaser, and a total drag. — Toni Cade Bambara

... in a capitalist society a man is expected to be an aggressive, uncompromising, factual, lusty, intelligent provider of goods,and the woman, a retiring, gracious, emotional, intuitive, attractive consumer of goods. — Toni Cade Bambara

I try to live [the Golden Rule] and I certainly expect it of some particular others. But I'll be damned if I want most folk out there to do unto me what they do unto themselves. — Toni Cade Bambara

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there. — Toni Cade Bambara

old folks is the nation. — Toni Cade Bambara

Writing is a legitimate way, an important way, to participate in the empowerment of the community that names me. — Toni Cade Bambara

The dream is real, my friends. The failure to realize it is the only unreality. — Toni Cade Bambara

Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation. — Toni Cade Bambara

What is happening to the daughters of the yam? Seem like they just don't know how to draw up the powers from the deep like before. Not full sunned and sweet anymore. — Toni Cade Bambara

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.... We'd better take the time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, revolutionary relationships. Mouth don't win the war. — Toni Cade Bambara

All writers, musicians, artists, choreographers/dancers, etc., work with the stuff of their experiences. It's the translation of it, the conversion of it, the shaping of it that makes for the drama. — Toni Cade Bambara

I'll be damned if I want most folks out there to do unto me what they do unto themselves. — Toni Cade Bambara

Life Lessons by Toni Cade Bambara

1. Toni Cade Bambara's work emphasizes the importance of recognizing the power of community and collective action. She encourages readers to stand up for what is right and to use their voices to create positive change in the world.
2. Bambara also emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting different cultures and backgrounds. She encourages readers to be open to learning from others and to be aware of their own biases.
3. Finally, Bambara encourages readers to be mindful of their own personal growth and development, and to strive for self-improvement and self-empowerment.