{"author":"John Howard Griffin","author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin","total_quotes":28,"quotes":[{"text":"The author explains that some find recourse from injustice in literature and art but that these tend to deepen sensitivity to injustice rather than dull it.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["education","idealism","perspective"],"id":12897,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"It was the ghetto. I had seen them before from the high altitude of one who could look down and pity. Now I belonged here and the view was different. A first glance told it all. Here it was pennies and clutter and spittle on the curb... Here was the indefinable stink of despair. Here modesty was the luxury. People struggled for it... Here sensuality was escape, proof of manhood for people who could prove it no other way... Here hips drew the eye and flirted with the eye and caused the eye to lust or laugh. It was better to look at hips than at the ghetto.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["dearth","despair","poverty","sadness"],"id":29579,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"We need a conversion of morals,' the elderly man said. 'Not just superficially, but profoundly. And in both races. We need a great saint-some enlightened common sense. Otherwise, we'll never have the right answers...","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["morality","racism","tolerance"],"id":48257,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls and bodies of other men (and in the process destroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["bigotry","hatred"],"id":52883,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"However it might go, I should have no regrets. If I should be reduced to begging in the street, then I should enjoy the feel of pavement beneath my feet and the odors of asphalt and automobile exhausts. Good and bad fortune were equally attractive when viewed in such a context. Hunger was as interesting as satiety. A life without sight was as interesting as life with sight. Who was to say different? Society? The bulk of humanity?They were living their first lives, cautiously aware that someday they would die. They had everything to lose. They could not take the risks. But I had been through death, had my insides burned out by it twice.I was living a second life, freed of those cautious awarenesses.I had nothing to lose. I could take all the risks.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["enlightenment","inspirational","motivational"],"id":68634,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"In the context of today, this WAS heroism.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["conventional-wisdom","culture","discipleship","humility","maturation"],"id":69437,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"If virtue does not equal powers, powers will be misused.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["discipleship","humility","leadership","self-discipline","servant-leadership"],"id":77916,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"The author meets an African-American who observes that his fellows who begin with aspirations to a good education, solid career, and the raising of a family slowly lose that incentive. Even those who have a college education, he observes, need to take menial jobs and begin to look for excitement in less productive places.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["aspirations","education","goals-setting"],"id":82034,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"We, who were reduced to eating on the sidewalk , were suddenly elevated in status by this man's misery. We were the aristocrats and he the beggar. It flattered us. We were superbly above him and the comedy gave us a delusion of high self-respect. In a while, the magnanimity of the rich would complete the picture. We would feed our scraps to the poor.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["condescension","poverty","social-classes","wealth"],"id":88450,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"},{"text":"A law is not good merely because the legislature wills it, but the legislature has the mortal duty to will only that which is good.","author":"John Howard Griffin","tags":["black-like-me","good","john-howard-griffin","judgement","law"],"id":105561,"author_id":"John+Howard+Griffin"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":28,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}