Lillian Smith
Lillian Smith
Lillian Eugenia Smithwas a writer and social critic of the Southern United States, known most prominently for her best-selling novel Strange Fruit. A white woman who openly embraced controversial positions on matters of race and gender equality, she was a southern liberal unafraid to criticize segregation and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, at a time when such actions virtually guaranteed social ostracism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 December 1897
CountryUnited States of America
No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within
When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.
Belief in Some One's right to punish you is the fate of all children in Judaic-Christian culture. But nowhere else, perhaps, have the rich seed-beds of Western homes found such a growing climate for guilt as is produced in the South by the combination of a warm moist evangelism and racial segregation.
For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into the masses. And where is the David who can slay this giant?
The point of life is to find the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality.