"Lack of encouragement never deterred me. I was the kind of person who would not be put down"
About this Quote
Defiance is doing its work here, but so is control. Constance Baker Motley frames resistance as temperament, not melodrama: “Lack of encouragement never deterred me” refuses the usual origin story where a mentor “saw something” and opened the door. The line quietly indicts a world that withholds approval as a form of governance. If you’re waiting for applause, you’re already agreeing to be managed.
The second sentence sharpens the posture into a self-description with teeth. “Would not be put down” is plainspoken, almost domestic language, which is exactly why it lands. It evokes the everyday mechanisms of suppression - condescension, gatekeeping, erasure - without needing to name them. The phrasing also dodges victimhood: she doesn’t narrate injury, she narrates refusal. That’s a political strategy as much as a personality trait.
Context gives the remark its voltage. Motley wasn’t stubborn in the abstract; she was a Black woman lawyer in mid-century America, a key architect of civil rights litigation, then a federal judge, moving through institutions built to deny her standing. “Lack of encouragement” reads, in that setting, as a polite synonym for systemic discouragement: exclusion dressed up as neutrality, “not yet,” “not qualified,” “be realistic.” Her intent is to strip those soft denials of their power.
The subtext is mentorship flipped into a warning: don’t romanticize resilience, but don’t outsource your permission to exist.
The second sentence sharpens the posture into a self-description with teeth. “Would not be put down” is plainspoken, almost domestic language, which is exactly why it lands. It evokes the everyday mechanisms of suppression - condescension, gatekeeping, erasure - without needing to name them. The phrasing also dodges victimhood: she doesn’t narrate injury, she narrates refusal. That’s a political strategy as much as a personality trait.
Context gives the remark its voltage. Motley wasn’t stubborn in the abstract; she was a Black woman lawyer in mid-century America, a key architect of civil rights litigation, then a federal judge, moving through institutions built to deny her standing. “Lack of encouragement” reads, in that setting, as a polite synonym for systemic discouragement: exclusion dressed up as neutrality, “not yet,” “not qualified,” “be realistic.” Her intent is to strip those soft denials of their power.
The subtext is mentorship flipped into a warning: don’t romanticize resilience, but don’t outsource your permission to exist.
Quote Details
| Topic | Never Give Up |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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