Quotes From "The Underground Railroad" By Colson Whitehead

The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race--which is not one race but many, with a million desires and hopes and wished for ourselves and our children? Colson Whitehead

And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are. Colson Whitehead

The whites were right to be afraid. One day the system would collapse in blood. An insurrection of one. She smiled for a moment, before the facts of her latest cell reasserted themselves. Scrabbling in the walls like a rat. Whether in the fields or underground or in an attic room America remained her warden. Colson Whitehead

Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn't understand the words, most of them at any rate, but 'created equal' was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand it either, if 'all men' did not truly mean all men. Colson Whitehead

But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it.. The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the Freeman had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others. Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn't understand the words, most of them at any rate, but created equal was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand it either, if all men did not truly mean all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other people, whether it was something you could hold in your hand, like dirt, or something you could not, like freedom. Colson Whitehead

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with the trees up close but from the outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. Here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn't stand. Colson Whitehead

Versifying left her cold. Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world. Colson Whitehead

He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act. Colson Whitehead

The doctor was a frequent visitor at Miss Trumball's establishment, preferring it to the Lanchester house, whose girls had a saturnine disposition in his opinion, as if imported from Maine or other gloom-loving provinces. Colson Whitehead

Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death. Colson Whitehead

Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her. Colson Whitehead

My father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit, " Ridgeway said. "All these years late, I prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. One destiny by divine perscription--the American imperative. . Colson Whitehead

The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib. Stolen babies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. Colson Whitehead

If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now. Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative. Colson Whitehead

The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America. Colson Whitehead

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. Colson Whitehead

Resentment was the hinge of her personality. Colson Whitehead

That is how the European tribes operate, she said, If they can't control it, they destroy it. Colson Whitehead

Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man. Colson Whitehead

It means what it say, " Ethel said. "It means that a Hebrew may not enslave a Hebrew. But the sons of Ham are not of that tribe. The were cursed, with black skin and tails. Where the Scripture condemns slavery, it is not speaking of negro slavery at all. Colson Whitehead

From the trunk of their scheme, choices and decisions sprouted like branches and shoots. Colson Whitehead

What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway? Colson Whitehead

White man trying to kill you slow every day, and sometimes trying to kill you fast. Why make it easy for him? That was one kind of work you could say no to. Colson Whitehead

Racial prejudice rotted one's faculties, he said. Colson Whitehead

Cora blamed the people who wrote it down. People always got things wrong, on purpose as much as by accident. Colson Whitehead