Quotes by Guyanese Authors

It is better to be hungry in joy, than to be filled in sorrow.
Dennis E. Adonis
A prisoner's shackles would always be a lawyers joy.
Dennis E. Adonis
Ladies and Gentlemen. I should like to inform you on behalf of the nation state of Guyana, that we are going to resign from being a country. We can't make it work. We have tried. We have done our best. It is not possible. The problems are insoluble. From midnight tonight, we shall cease trading. The country is now disbanded. We will voluntarily liquidate ourselves. The nation will disperse quietly, a little shamefaced but so what. We had a go.Different people have suggested different solutions. Do it this way. Try that. Let me have a go. Nothing works. We are at the mercy of the rich countries. A team of management consultants from the United States could not find the answer, and for not finding the answer, we had to pay them an amount that substantially increased our national debt. We give in, gracefully, but we give in."And then he imagined himself, quietly and with dignity, putting his papers in his briefcase, bowing to the hushed assembly, returning to clear out his office and going for a walk with his wife along the sea wall. (The Ventriloquist's Tale
Pauline Melville
An idle tongue is the mother of all conflicts.
Dennis E. Adonis
Never restart a journey and use the same road that failed you before.
Dennis E. Adonis
There was a period when the capitalist system increased the well-being of significant numbers of people as a by-product of seeking out profits for a few, but today the quests for profits comes into sharp conflict with people’s demands that their material and social needs should be fulfilled. Pg. 10
Walter Rodney
In a way, underdevelopment is a paradox. Many parts of the world that are naturally rich are actually poor and parts that are not so well off in wealth of soil and sun-soil are enjoying the highest standards of living. When the capitalists from the developed parts of the world try to explain this paradox, they often make it sound as though there is something “God-given” about the situation. One bourgeois economist, in a book on development, accepted that the comparative statistics of the world today show a gap that is much larger than it was before. By his own admission, the gap between the developed and underdeveloped countries has increased by at least 15 to 20 times over the last 150 years. However, the bourgeois economist in question does not give a historical explanation, nor does he consider that there is a relationship of exploitation which allowed capitalist parasites to grow fat and impoverished the dependencies. Instead he puts forward a biblical explanation! Pg. 21
Walter Rodney
In life, you don’t have miracles, you don’t have anything but whatever you can hold on to.
Nandanie Phalgoo
Many guilty consciences have been created by the slave trade. Europeans know that they carried on the slave trade, and Africans are aware that the trade would have been impossible if certain Africans did not cooperate with slave ships. To ease their guilty consciences, Europeans try to throw the major responsibility for the slave trade on to the Africans. One major author on the slave trade (appropriately titled Sins of Our Fathers) explained how many white people urged him to state that the trade was the responsibility of African chiefs, and that Europeans merely turned up to buy captives- as though without European demand there would have been captives sitting on the beach by the millions! Issues such as those are not the principal concern of this study, but they can be correctly approached only after understanding that Europe became the center of a world-wide system and that it was European capitalism which set slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in motion. Pg. 82
Walter Rodney
The betrayal I now felt was greater because it had been perpetrated with the greatest of charm and courtesy.
E.R. Braithwaite
It was like a disease, and these children whom I loved without caring about their skins or their backgrounds, they were tainted with the hateful virus which attacked their vision, distorting everything that was not white or English.
E.R. Braithwaite
Instead, we try to give them affection, confidence and guidance, more or less in that order, because experience has shown us that those are their most immediate needs.
E.R. Braithwaite
Development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth. It means that an economy must register advances which in turn will promote further progress. The loss of industry and skill in Africa was extremely small, if we measure it from the viewpoint of modern scientific achievements or even by the standards of England in the late eighteenth century. However, it must be borne in mind that to be held back at one stage means that it is impossible to go on to a further stage. When a person is forced to leave school after only two years of primary school education, it is no reflection on him that he is academically and intellectually less developed than someone who had the opportunity to be schooled right through to university level. What Africa experienced in the early centuries of trade was precisely a loss of development opportunity, and this is of greatest importance. Pg. 105
Walter Rodney
People would say bad things about you, because it is the only way their insignificant self can feel better than you.
Dennis E. Adonis
It is better to believe an obvious lie, than to swallow a deceitful truth.
Dennis E. Adonis
It will always be foolish to ask a cheater if they would ever cheat on you.
Dennis Adonis
A deceitful tongue will always be good at twisting the truth.
Dennis Adonis
A rich man who robs from the poor is really a pauper in the land of morality.
Dennis Adonis
But are we human creatures as honest, kind, trustworthy as we at times are inclined to believe?
Lawrence G. Taylor
Marriage to the groom does not means that his heart belongs to the bride.
Dennis E. Adonis
Stay away from any minute of joy that can bring you a lifetime of sorrow.
Dennis E. Adonis
Life can never be perfect. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing that it will be.
Dennis Adonis
The truth is that any figure of Africans imported into the Americas which is narrowly based on the surviving records is bound to be low, because there were so many people at the time who had a vested interest in smuggling slaves (and withholding data. Nevertheless, if the low figure of ten million was accepted as basis for evaluating the impact of slaving on Africa as a whole, the conclusions that could legitimately be drawn would confound those who attempt to make light of the experience of the rape of Africans from 1445 to 1870. Pg. 96
Walter Rodney
On any basic figure of the Africans landed alive in the Americas, one would have to make several extensions- starting with a calculation to cover mortality in transshipment. The Atlantic crossing, or “Middle Passage,” as it was called by European slavers, was notorious for the number of deaths incurred, averaging in the vicinity of 15-20 per cent. There were also numerous deaths in Africa between time of capture and time of embarkation, especially in cases where captives had to travel hundreds of miles to the coast. Most important of all (given that warfare was the principal means of obtaining captives) it is necessary to make some estimate of the number of people killed and injured so as to extract the millions who were taken alive and sound. The resultant figure would be many times the millions landed alive outside of Africa, and it is that figure which represents the number of Africans directly removed from the population and labor force of Africa because of the establishment of slave production by Europeans. Pg. 96
Walter Rodney
You must understand, owing to my loss of faith in life, I had gradually, inevitably embarked upon a small world of my creation.
Lawrence G. Taylor
Self redemption is the first step to exoneration from guilt.
Dennis E. Adonis
A woman should be mindful that the key to one man's heart does not necessarily fits into the lock of another.
Dennis E. Adonis
Saving a worthy relationship is easier than trying to start a new one.
Dennis E. Adonis
Better to be happy with the cod fish in your plate now, than to linger for the taste of a tuna that is still swimming in the sea.
Dennis E. Adonis
So long as we learn it doesn’t matter who teaches us, does it?
E.R. Braithwaite
What's the rush? Recognise that with the time at our disposal, there is only a limited number of good books you can read, a few really good movies worth seeing, and a finite number of hours, days, years to enjoy them!
Ken Puddicombe
However, I must admit that keeping myself to myself has not always been comforting. At times, I seemed to suffer spells of depression and loneliness, longing to become healthy again; of going out and facing a world of injustices, of misery, of widespread indifference.
Lawrence G. Taylor
Sometimes in order to appreciate your future, you must remember the past.
Dennis E. Adonis
Life is a journey that gives you the liberty to draw your own map, and choose your own route.
Dennis E. Adonis
One of the most foolish of all human philosophies, is to believe that we all have an unavoidable destiny.
Dennis E. Adonis
Society has made it so I have to get paid in order to do basic things like eat and be indoors and not be naked. Once that's happened, morality's bound to get slippery.
Karin Lowachee
For a lack of education, a child's future may hold no fortune.
Dennis E. Adonis
Oh God, forgive me for the hateful thoughts, because I love them, these brutal, disarming bastards, I love them …
E.R. Braithwaite
It is a moral travesty to give a woefully thirsty man a drink of water in a measuring cup.
Dennis Adonis
In a kingdom of thieves, the ways of an honest man will always be a crime.
Dennis Adonis
From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with European needs. Pg. 77
Walter Rodney
You have taught them to think differently. That is how we beat the bigotry. Class by class. Year by Year
E.R. Braithwaite
Voting is not a right. It is a method used to determine which politician was most able to brainwash you.
Dennis E. Adonis
Today I was a teacher, employed. True, I was also a teacher untried, but that could also be an advantage. I would learn, by God I’d learn. Nothing was going to stop me.
E.R. Braithwaite
♫ I learned a lesson today: never judge a person by the way they act, nor how they dress, or the way they have their disabilities. Because everyone on Earth suffers the same hell, whether in love or hate, life or death.
Nandanie Phalgoo