John Carlin · 288 pages
Rating: (3.5K votes)
“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, the power to unite people that little else has...It is more powerful in govenments in breaking down racial barriers.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
“Your freedom and mine cannot be seperated”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
“Should a black woman carrying her "madam's" white baby travel in the "whites only" or the "nonwhites" section of the train? Or would a Japanese visitor who used a "whites only" public toilet be breaking the law? Or what was a bus conductor to do when he ordered a brown-skinned passanger to get off a whites-only bus and the passanger refused, insisting that he was a white man with a deep suntan?”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
“Most important of all, Mandela stated that the way to a negotiated solution lay in a simple-sounding formula: reconciling white fears with black aspirations.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
“Having won over his own people—in itself no mean feat, for they were a disparate bunch, drawn from all manner of creeds, colors, and tribes—he then went out and won over the enemy.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
“This was the moment when I understood more clearly than ever before that the liberation struggle of our people was not so much about liberating blacks from bondage,” Sexwale said, picking up on the core lesson he had learned from Mandela in prison, “but more so, it was about liberating white people from fear. And there it was. ‘Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!’ Fear melting away.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
“I meant “tribalism” in the widest sense of the word, as applied to race, religion, nationalism, or politics. George Orwell defined it as that “habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad.”
― John Carlin, quote from Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
“Even then I already carried the underground in my soul.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Notes from Underground & The Double
“You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ...”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Martyn Pig
“Child, I am taking you to The Autumnal Ball.”
“The . . . but . . . but . . . I don’t have a ticket.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But how—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But I don’t have a thousand dollars for—”
“I said, don’t worry about it.”
“But how can I not worry about it? Worrying is what I do! About everything!”
With an unexpectedly calm smile, Coco put I finger to my lips. “And that’s why you need a fairy godmother. For the rest of the night you’re not allowed to worry about anything. You have one, and only one, responsibility. To have a dream come true and have the sweetass time of your sweetass life. Do you understand me?”
― David Clawson, quote from My Fairy Godmother Is a Drag Queen
“The snow came after two o' clock. It fell faintly in the cones of lamplight, descending like fleets or fairies through the cold sky. I was awake - the only one in town, I was sure - and I was sure those miniature fallen sylphs were for me and my personal delectation. They came for me, because nature likes a saint. They settled on my window sill, they collected on the dark grass of my lawn, they danced and whirled in the wind gusts before my eyes. I put my hand to the windowpane to greet it, the first snow. By the time I woke in the morning, I saw that after the snow had come to me, it had visited everyone.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals
“How much did you hear?"
"Everything that mattered."
He nodded, his face unreadable. "It is what it is. All cards are on the table."
"Not quite." I sat up.
"Oh?"
"The real Rogan hasn't asked me."
He frowned.
"I want the dragon to ask me."
"Be careful," he warned.
"I know what the Head of House Rogan wants. I heard all of his noble warnings about the future of House Baylor. I saw him told himself in check. I want to know what you want, Connor. What do you want of me? Ask me.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Wildfire
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