Aaliyah McCormick > Aaliyah's Quotes

“If we can do a bit better tomorrow, we will be doing much, much better than we have ever done before.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“Those whom I treated
well are those who do
me the most injury now”
― Sappho

“Sometimes being a good ally is about opening the door for someone instead of insisting that your voice is the only one that matters.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“Are we more concerned with the size, power, and wealth of our society or with creating a more just society? The failure to pursue justice is not only a moral default. Without it social tensions will grow and the turbulence in the streets will persist despite disapproval or repressive action. Even more, a withered sense of justice in an expanding society leads to corruption of the lives of all Americans. All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichmann chose to ignore: how responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“Wealth unchaperoned
by Virtue is never
an innocuous neighbor”
― Sappho

“Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual or physical homicide upon the out-group.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“White savior narratives embedded in feminist rhetoric tend to position the people who don't get out as not being worth the effort of engagement, of needing to be led toward progressive ideologies instead of understanding that the conversations that need to happen between the proverbial hood and the hills are ones between equals who have had to face different obstacles to arrive at the same destination.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“When we only have carceral solutions to social problems, there is very little room for actual justice, much less healing.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“When some victims are seen as disposable, then eventually all victims are disposable, regardless of white supremacist patriarchal claims to be invested in the protection of white womanhood. It's not enough to show up for the big battles; unfortunately feminism has to show up for every battle, or it can rapidly find itself nearly powerless to prevent moments like these.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“Hesperus, you herd
homeward whatever
Dawn's light dispersed”
― Sappho

“Awed by her splendor

Stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver”
― Sappho, Sappho

“Hello.
I hope somebody is listening.”
― Alice Oseman, Radio Silence

“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends? … That,’ Frederick said, 'is where the tragedy is.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I am haunted by humans.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I'll never again speak to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now. So we raise a glass to them--and hope that perhaps somewhere, they are raising a glass to us.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“Your silence will not protect you.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“Because stories tell a truth, if not precisely the truth.”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

“Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one’s looking.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Pans and other such objects are the very opposite of monuments. They don't commemorate revolutions or victories on the battlefield; don't allude to great contracts or those moments of upheaval that have an undeniably transformative effect on society. It's rarely possible to link them to one specific date, to say: 'From that day on, everything was different.' They belong not to the so-called big picture of history but instead to a realm that is far more intimate. Quiet, and overlooked. A realm that was long considered female--and, accordingly, insignificant.”
― Annabelle Hirsch, A History of Women in 101 Objects

“As far as I know, there are two ways to get over someone: Surrender to the anger that’s already there, or invent something to get angry about. Sometimes it was always wrong, and the only thing to do is stop believing it was ever good to love them. But sometimes they were good to you. Sometimes you go looking for kindling and find that green leaves won’t burn, that the garden was watered too well. Sometimes you have to rearrange the truth into something you won’t miss.

And sometimes, when enough time goes by, it gets hard to remember which one you did.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“I actually think that a lot of people are very beautiful, and maybe even more beautiful when they are not aware of it themselves.”
― Alice Oseman, Solitaire

“To save our democracy, Americans need to restore the basic norms that once protected it. But we must do more than that. We must extend those norms through the whole of a diverse society. We must make them truly inclusive. America's democratic norms, at their core, have always been sound. But for much of our history, they were accompanied - indeed, sustained - by racial exclusion. Now those norms must be made to work in an age of racial equality and unprecedented ethnic diversity. Few societies in history have managed to be both multiracial and genuinely democratic. That is our challenge. It is also our opportunity. If we meet it, America will truly be exceptional.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future