Hisham Matar Quotes

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which evokes more anger – businesses that know and care about nothing except profits or governments that know and care about nothing except power and paper-pushing. However, anger is not a solution. Anger attempts to shout down problems, and it never works.

Not all cops are bad, but this kind of harassment has been going on for years in the ghetto.

You have to start with slavery because those abuses have never been eradicated. You know, people are not living in slums because they voted to. You know, their children are not in jail because they wanted them to. You know, these are the results of a people who have been oppressed and suffer national oppression, you know.

Racism is here and will always exist, but we can't use it as a crutch.

This is a sick business. It's so sad.

America says we are a great democratic society and other people should follow our example. Well, I say we benefited from slavery, and as a nation, we never faced that because the people in power chose not to.

Our long memories hold the stories of what our people accomplished, but they also hold the prejudices, the injustices, the harm that we've received from others.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery other than in prisons - but it was a lie that you regained your freedom once you left the prison gates.

Trayvon Martin was 17, Mike Brown was young, Tamir Rice was 12. And so young people are affected by it, possibly the most affected, because they're seeing themselves.

People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination.

The disparity between the haves and have-nots was always blatantly obvious to me, and it's that exact gap that drove me to start writing and pick up a pen. I wanted to explain and understand the world around me because it was easy to see it was corrupted.

'Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto' is a surprise and a fresh way of looking at Harlem, connecting the black district with the architecture of its historical past.

There is no excuse for inaction in the face of economic injustice.

The cancer that demands our urgent attention is corruption and poverty.

In the late '90s, I spent a lot of time on reservations, and there was a level of poverty and injustice that I had not witnessed before. I was shocked by it. This is federally controlled land, and there was an insidious mix of apathy and exploitation.

My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.

It's kind of almost not fair that certain people don't get the opportunities that others get just because of where they are born or where they were brought up.

The post-crisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it.

Corruption is rife in the Muslim world, and when it is coupled with the marginalization of religion, it manifests itself as frustration and becomes a fertile recruiting ground for extremism.

I am not a philosopher, only frustrated by the development of the world we live in - and too stupid to keep my mouth shut when I see injustice.

Only when we recognise our privilege, we will be able to make a change for others.

I have to battle so many issues, and the biggest is racism.

People who have no stake in society are the least likely to have respect for it.

My only crime is breathing and existing.