Home > Author > Trevor Noah
41 " If you're black in south Africa, speaking English is the one thing that can give you a leg up. [...] If you're standing in the dock, English is the difference between getting off with a fine or going to prison. "
― Trevor Noah , Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
42 " Hustling is to work what surfing the Internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet—tweets, Facebook posts, lists—you’ve read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year. When I look back on it, that’s what hustling was. It’s maximal effort put into minimal gain. It’s a hamster wheel. If I’d put all that energy into studying I’d have earned an MBA. "
43 " Von ihrer Familie entfremdet und schwanger von einem Mann, mit dem sie nicht gesehen werden durfte, war sie auf sich allein gestellt. Sie kam in den Kreißsaal, die Ärzte schnitten ihr den Bauch auf, griffen hinein und holten ein halb weißes, halb schwarzes Kind hervor, das gegen eine Reihe von Gesetzen, Statuten und Vorschriften verstieß - ich wurde schon als Verbrechen geboren. - S. 40 "
― Trevor Noah , Born A Crime Stories from a South African Childhood / Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race / Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
44 " An der H. A. Jack School erkannte ich, dass ich schwarz war. Vor meinem Erlebnis im Pausenhof hatte ich mich nie entscheiden müssen, doch als ich dazu gezwungen wurde, entschied ich mich für schwarz. Die Welt betrachtete mich als farbig, aber ich verbrachte mein Leben nicht damit, mich selbst zu betrachten. Ich betrachtete andere Menschen. Ich sah mich so, wie ich die anderen Menschen um mich herum sah, und diese Menschen waren schwarz. - S. 77 "
45 " My mom's attitude was, "I choose you, kid. I brought you into this world, and I'm going to give you everything I never had." She poured herself into me. "
― Trevor Noah
46 " My mom would always say, "My job is to feed your body, feed your spirit, and feed your mind. "
47 " Nelson Mandela once said, "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, "I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being. "
48 " Why show him the world when he’s never going to leave the ghetto?”“Because,” she would say, “even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough. "
49 " The white neighborhoods of Johannesburg were built on white fear—fear of black crime, fear of black uprisings and reprisals—and as a result virtually every house sits behind a six-foot wall, and on top of that wall is electric wire. Everyone lives in a plush, fancy maximum-security prison. There is no sitting on the front porch, no saying hi to the neighbors, no kids running back and forth between houses. I’d ride my bike around the neighborhood for hours without seeing a single kid. I’d hear them, though. They were all meeting up behind brick walls for playdates I wasn’t invited to. I’d hear people laughing and playing and I’d get off my bike and creep up and peek over the wall and see a bunch of white kids splashing around in someone’s swimming pool. I was like a Peeping Tom, but for friendship. It was only after a year or so that I figured out the key to making black friends in the suburbs: the children of domestics." (from "Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah) "
50 " My mother had exposed me to a different world than the one she grew up in. She bought me the books she never got to read. She took me to the schools that she never got to go to. I immersed myself in those worlds and I came back looking at the world a different way. "
51 " The only authority my mother recognized was God's. God is love and the Bible is truth--everything else was up for debate. She taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her. "
52 " School is just the place where you learn the rules of the system. Your life is where you get your education. "
53 " It's a powerful experience, shiting. There's something magical about it, profound even. I think God made humans shit in the way we do because it brings us back down to earth and gives us humility. I don't care who you are, we all shit the same. "
54 " We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited. "
55 " People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing. "
56 " Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people. "
57 " If you're Native American and you pray to the wolves, you're a savage. If you're African and you pray to your ancestors, you're a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that's just common sense. "
58 " Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being. "
59 " We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "
60 " The first thing I learned about having money was that it gives you choices. People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money. "