John Hope Franklin Quotes

"I'm just waiting to see if it will happen. I've been disillusioned so many times before. It's 2006, and there's nothing in the nation's capital to show what happened to African-Americans. Nothing."
-John Hope Franklin

"We must get beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths... and tell the world the glories of our journey."
-John Hope Franklin

"If we only have five families that want to relocate, that is wonderful, ... We will have done what we should."
-John Hope Franklin

"I think he's been in every courthouse basement in the South."
-John Hope Franklin

"If the house is to be set in order, one cannot begin with the present; he must begin with the past."
-John Hope Franklin

"I grew up thinking that you were supposed to read and write all your waking hours."
-John Hope Franklin

"We have sat on the river bank and caught catfish with pin hooks. The time has come to harpoon a whale."
-John Hope Franklin

"There's a great desire in people after a tragedy like this to go back to their lives as it was, ... This may not be possible for some."
-John Hope Franklin

"I want to be out there on the firing line, helping, directing or doing something to try to make this a better world, a better place to live."
-John Hope Franklin

"If money, education, and honesty will not bring to me as much privilege, as much equality as they bring to any American citizen, then they are to me a curse, and not a blessing."
-John Hope Franklin

"We also learn that this country and the Western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensable to making a better world. In a life of learning that is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all."
-John Hope Franklin

"One feels the excitement of hearing an untold story."
-John Hope Franklin

"Possibly the most important phase to recovery is getting the life back to normal again, ... And what we're talking about here in Corvallis is assisting people who want to get their lives back to normal, and who cannot go back to the life that is in the Gulf Coast because of Katrina."
-John Hope Franklin

"What we are having difficulty with right now is finding the voice."
-John Hope Franklin

"Her determination (was) to stand up, not merely for herself, not merely for all women, not merely for African-Americans but for all Americans."
-John Hope Franklin

"We are going to do our best to reach out to every citizen of the United States, to engage them in every way possible, and to make certain that they appreciate fully the opportunity which we have to do something not only significant but even spectacular."
-John Hope Franklin