RAKEEM > RAKEEM's Quotes

“When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“That England, a country not properly invaded since 1066 but which has
invaded almost every nation on the planet, can have a party named the UK
Independence Party win 13 per cent of the national vote in 2015 speaks volumes about collective amnesia and ability to distort the facts.”
― Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

“The concept of whiteness goes hand in hand with the concept of white supremacy – hence why the progress against white supremacy that has been made so far feels, to some white people, like an attack on their identity.”
― Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

“Racism is apparently a card to be played; much like the joker, it’s a
very versatile card that can be used in any situation that might require
it. Only non-white people ever play this card to excuse their own
personal failings - even those of us that are materially successful.
Humans racialised as white cannot play the race card - just like they
cannot be terrorists - so European national empires colonising almost
the entire globe and enacting centuries of unapologetically and openly
racist legislation and practices, churning out an impressively large body
of proudly racist justificatory literature and cinema and much else has
had no impact on shaping human history, it has really just been black
and brown people playing cards.”
― Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

“I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it.’ David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 19381”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“ethnic cleansing is an effort to render an ethnically mixed country homogenous by expelling a particular group of people and turning them into refugees while demolishing the homes they were driven out from.”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“The human geography of Palestine as a whole was forceably transformed. The Arab character of the cities was effaced by the destruction of large sections, including the spacious park in Jaffa and community centres in Jerusalem. This transformation was driven by the desire to wipe out one nation’s history and culture and replace it with a fabricated version of another, from which all traces of the indegenous population were elided.”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“Israelis enjoy telling Palestinians they should be happy they live in ‘the only democracy’ in the region where they have the right to vote, but no one is under any illusion that voting comes with any actual political power or influence.”
― Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“Be in no doubt that the transatlantic slavery of Africans was racial genocide and racial exploitation. It distorted Africa’s economic growth as a continent making it wholly reliant on its colonial masters, who were exploiting it. It displaced millions of Africans, with many dying on the way to new lands and at the hands of ruthless White slave masters upon destination.”
― Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, This is Why I Resist: Don't Define My Black Identity

“Demonisation is the ideological backbone of an unequal society.”
― Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

“Being born into a prosperous middle-class family typically endows you with a safety net for life. If you are not naturally very bright, you are still likely to go far and, at the very least, will never experience poverty as an adult. A good education compounded by your parents' 'cultural capital', financial support and networks will always see you through. If you are a bright child born into a working-class family, you do not have any of these things. The odds are that you will not be better off than your parents.”
― Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

“Get rid of all the cleaners, rubbish collectors, bus drivers, supermarket checkout staff and secretaries, for example, and society will very quickly grind to a halt. On the other hand, if we woke up one morning to find that all the highly paid advertising executives, management consultants and private equity directors had disappeared, society would go on much as it did before: in a lot of cases, probably quite a bit better. So,”
― Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

“White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“The mess we are living in is a deliberate one. If it was created by people, it can be dismantled by people, and it can be rebuilt in a way that serves all, rather than a selfish, hoarding few.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can't afford to stay silent.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“Not seeing race does little to deconstruct racist structures or materially improve the conditions which people of colour are subject to daily. In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon - earned or not - because of their race, their class, and their gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“When I talk about white privilege, I don’t mean that white people have it easy, that they’ve never struggled, or that they’ve never lived in poverty. But white privilege is the fact that if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way. And you probably won’t even notice it.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“White people are so used to seeing a reflection of themselves in all representations of humanity at all times, that they only notice it when it’s taken away from them.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Consistency is the playground of dull minds.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind