Philosophy Quote by Richard Wright — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.”

“If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb...But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself?”

“I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [...].”

“It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous -- even death is terrible only if we fear it.”

“I am, therefore I'll think.”

“The secret of happiness is love and secret of love is nonjudgmental care.”

“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

“To acknowledge the need of a new world-view would undermine the whole of their activity, and not many thinkers were willing to pay that price. Particularly not in a society where social exclusion meant rapid transportation to the proudest invention of the humanist sciences: the mental hospital.”

“Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.”