01c. 2002 ADI don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. 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. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
03c. 2002 ADLearn from your past and be better because of your past, but don't cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don't hold on to it. Don't be bitter.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
04c. 2002 ADI don't regret anything I've ever done in life, any choice that I've made. But I'm consumed with regret for the things I didn't do, the choices I didn't make, the things I didn't say. 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 to answer to. "What if..." "If only...""I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
05c. 2002 ADWe 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.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
06c. 2002 ADIt didn't matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places to be.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
07c. 2002 ADhe way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
08c. 2002 ADThe hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
09c. 2002 ADA man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be the man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have , it's who you are. Being more of a man doesn't mean your woman has to be less than you.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
11c. 2002 ADBut 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.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
12c. 2002 ADThe tricky thing about the hood is that you’re always working, working, working, and you feel like something’s happening, but really nothing’s happening at all.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
13c. 2002 ADThe world has been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the world because he has none of the tools necessary to cope with it.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
14c. 2002 ADWhen 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.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
15c. 2002 ADNelson 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 beingTrevor Noah / quote ↗
16c. 2002 ADI became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
17c. 2002 ADyou struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It’s a strange feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either hate them or love them, but that’s not how people are.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
18c. 2002 ADYou want to live in a world where someone is good or bad. Where you either hate them or love them. But that's not how people are.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
19c. 2002 ADOne day you’re going to get arrested, and when you do, don’t call me. I’ll tell the police to lock you up just to teach you a lesson.” Because there were some black parents who’d actually do that, not pay their kid’s bail, not hire their kid a lawyer—the ultimate tough love. But it doesn’t always work, because you’re giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needs love. You’re trying to teach him a lesson, and now that lesson is the rest of his life.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
20c. 2002 ADTry being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community. You will face more hate and ridicule and ostracism than you can even begin to fathom. People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive. That is what happened to me in Eden Park.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
21c. 2002 ADThe dogs left with us and we walked. I sobbed the whole way home, still heartbroken. My mom had no time for my whining.“Why are you crying?!”“Because Fufi loves another boy.”“So? Why would that hurt you? It didn’t cost you anything. Fufi’s here. She still loves you. She’s still your dog. So get over it.”Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed me more than Fufi. It was a valuable lesson to me. The hard thing was understanding that Fufi wasn’t cheating on me with another boy. She was merely living her life to the fullest. Until I knew that she was going out on her own during the day, her other relationship hadn’t affected me at all. Fufi had no malicious intent.I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not own the thing that you love. I was lucky to learn that lesson at such a young age. I have so many friends who still, as adults, wrestle with feelings of betrayal. They’ll come to me angry and crying and talking about how they’ve been cheated on and lied to, and I feel for them. I understand what they’re going through. I sit with them and buy them a drink and I say, “Friend, let me tell you the story of Fufi.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
22c. 2002 ADIn society, we do horrible things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. We don’t see their face. We don’t see them as people.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
23c. 2002 ADBecause racism exists, and you have to pick a side. You can say that you don’t pick sides, but eventually life will force you to pick a side.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
24c. 2002 ADIn any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn't merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent.Trevor Noah / quote ↗
