David Dinkins Quotes
In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.
Quotes to Explore
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The first job I ever had was at a pool-liner-manufacturing plant. Minimum wage was $4.25, and that's what I was making. It was this huge, hot, un-air-conditioned factory staffed with all women and me. This is in Georgia, during the summertime, so it was pretty ridiculous.
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Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.
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I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.
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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
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I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
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Death is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God's grace.
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Awards are not something that I measure my work by. I've been so fortunate and I've gotten to do such terrific things that it seems petty to look back and say, 'Oh, I should have gotten that prize.' I don't look at it that way.
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If you don't learn to laugh at troubles, you won't have anything to laugh at when you grow old.
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The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.
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We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.
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We never did these kinds of loans that really started this mess, the subprime loans. We just never got into that business. We were enticed a lot of times to do so by a lot of Wall Street-type players, but I, frankly, never understood some of this stuff.
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The children break all my jewelry, so everything I wear is cheap - from Topshop or Dorothy Perkins.
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Violence is the first refuge of the violent.
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I went through a big Kurt Vonnegut phase. But the writers who made me decide at a very early age that this is probably something I wanted to do were Stephen King and Douglas Adams, when I was probably, like, ten years old.
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It is so funny because I was always embarrassed because I never had formal training in acting.
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Give the peasants neither life nor death.
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I have always actually been with and attracted to very strong women, and I think I've learned a lot from them.
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I'm looking forward to writing more novels for young adults.
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I'm really good with fighting with my feet.
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You have to give people permission to laugh. That's why they would always cut to the banana peel in the Laurel and Hardy movies.
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People think that there is so much money in tennis, but the reality is unless you're ranked in about the top 50 you don't earn much at all. It is hard to support yourself travelling the world, to be away from home most of the year and to pay for a coach to help you become a better player.
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That is another theme in the book [Dreams from My Father]. How do we exercise more empathy in our public discourse? How do we get the black to see through the eyes of the white? Or the citizen to see through the eyes of the immigrant? Or the straight to see through the eyes of the gay? That has always been a struggle in our politics.
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You have to question a cinematic culture that preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario, which is both complicit and complex. It's misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman's sexual presentation of self.
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In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.
