"…in the early stages, the whites were kept very effectively away from the Aborigines. And whites will tell you quite blankly, I’ve never met an Aborigine in my life, so how could they know about us, how could they feel for us? It was done deliberately. They didn’t want friends of the Aborigines coming out and upsetting the jolly old white Australian apple cart you know, rocking the boat."

Oodgeroo Noonuccal Literature See all quotes by Oodgeroo Noonuccal →

React to this quote

More by Oodgeroo Noonuccal

“…I’m very rich because I’m loved by all my people, it’s a very beautiful thing. No money could surpass that. The love that my people feel for me is just so tremendous. It’s a lovely feeling.”

“…In the Aboriginal world we give way to all emotions. In the ‘British’, the present white generation of Australian people have been told that to cry is weakness, and if a ten year old boy gets up and cries they say, My goodness! But in the Aboriginal world, to cry is a beautiful thing. To us it’s compassion…”

“…I can’t afford the luxury of despair or pessimism. We still have to hope. We’re a timeless people, we’ve lived in a timeless land. We have suffered the invasion of two hundred years, and we’ll go on suffering. But we are going to survive…”

Resonant Thoughts

"Recent focus on the issue of racism has generated discourse but has had little impact on the behavior of white feminists towards black women. Often the white women who are busy publishing papers and b…"

— bell hooks

Education1952–2021

#knowledge

"Such a scene as the division of last Tuesday I never saw, and never expect to see again. ... It was like seeing Caesar stabbed in the Senate House, or seeing Oliver taking the mace from the table; a s…"

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

Politics1826–1878

#family

"Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed. At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once.…"

— Philip Pullman

Literature1946

#life

"The greatest American industry — why has no one ever said so? — is the industry of using words. We pay tens of millions of people to spend their lives lying to us, or telling us the truth, or supplyin…"

— Randall Jarrell

Literature1914–1965

#life