1. “Unless we learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. This is no longer merely an academic exercise but may contain our worlds fate and our destiny.”
2. “You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.”
3. “Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve an to protect the family and the individual.”
4. “Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.”
5. “History is written by winners.”
6. “In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.”
7. “Every time an old person dies, it’s like a library burning down.”
8. “You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.”
9. “Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.”
10. “The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle.”
11. “When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand.”
12. “If you go back to before mankind came out of the cave, there was hatred.”
13. “Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known.”
14. “Brown people wouldn’t speak to someone who was black.”
15. “Roots is not just saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.”
16. “Racism and hatred are synonymous.”
17. “It’s an hour during the week where you can just slow down.”
18. “That’s what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.”
19. “We all suffer. If a man’s wise, he learns from it.”
20. “I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.”
