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Bernice Johnson Reagon

"One of the biggest things I understood in a program like that was that it allowed more young African American scholars to do field research in the Caribbean and in Africa than had ever happened before in the history of the country and since."

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"One of the biggest things I understood in a program like that was that it allowed more young African American scholars to do field research in the Caribbean and in Africa than had ever happened before in the history of the country and since."

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Amber Hurdle

"In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain."

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Amber Hurdle

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."

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Amber Hurdle

"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."

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Amber Hurdle

"Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times."

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Amber Hurdle

"Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living. that's the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred years or only a few weeks. It's all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers."

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Amber Hurdle

"How quickly we come around,' Sazed whispered. 'It wasn't long ago that men were forced to watch the Lord Ruler cut the heads from innocent people. Now we do it to ourselves."

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Amber Hurdle

"One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics."

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Amber Hurdle

"The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men."

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Amber Hurdle

"Mankind, not womankind, has slaughtered more humans in the name of God and Religion than for any other reason."

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Amber Hurdle

"Like the Arthurian years at Camelot, the Sixties constituted a breakthrough, a fleeting moment of glory, a time when a significant little chunk of humanity briefly realised its moral potential and flirted with its neurological destiny, a collective spiritual awakening that flared brilliantly until the barbaric and mediocre impulses of the species drew tight once more the curtains of darkness."

Explore more quotes by Bernice Johnson Reagon

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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"I organized Sweet Honey In The Rock in 1973. The music was sanity and balance."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail... and I'd never heard it before in my life."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You're scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn't have religion."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs."
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Bernice Johnson Reagon
"In fact when Sweet Honey was ten years old it was too big for me to run, and I knew it, but I ran it for another thirteen years because I couldn't convince other people to really do it. And this year, I'm not running it."
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