# Quote — Ram Dass, Be Here Now

> We had a Negro psychiatrist, Madison Presnell, working with us, and I had been trained to be a very liberal person about Negroes, which meant that you didn't have feelings. It was a phony kind of liberal thing. I went out of my way to be liberal. You know, that very self-conscious kind of equality. And Madison and I turned on together and I looked at Madison, and there we were, the same human beings. It was just that he was wearing that skin and I was wearing this skin. And it was no more or less than that. It was that shirt and this shirt and it had no more relevance than that. And I looked at that, and suddenly there we were, whereas before I had been so busy with my super-liberal reaction to color of skin, that I couldn't relax enough to share this unitive place.

- Author: [Ram Dass](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ram-dass.md)
- Book: [Be Here Now](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ram-dass/be-here-now.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ram_Dass#Be_Here_Now_(1971)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ram-dass/be-here-now/we-had-a-negro

## More from this book

> Every time I went to a family gathering, I was the boy who made it. I was a Professor at Harvard and everybody stood around in awe and listened to my every word, and all I felt was that horror that I knew inside that I didn't know. Of course, it was all such beautiful, gentle horror, because there was so much reward involved.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ram-dass/be-here-now/every-time-i-went.md)

> I had gone through game, after game, after game, first being a professor at Harvard, then being a psychedelic spokesman, and still people were constantly looking into my eyes, like "Do you know?" Just that subtle little look, and I was constantly looking into their eyes "Do you know?"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ram-dass/be-here-now/i-had-gone.md)

> Here I was, sitting with the boys of the first team in cognitive psychology, personality psychology, developmental psychology [at Stanford and Harvard], and in the midst of this I felt here were men and women who, themselves were not highly evolved beings. Their own lives were not fulfilled.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ram-dass/be-here-now/here-i-was.md)