A Well-Spent Life (1971)

Mance Lipscomb: Self

Quotes 

• Mance Lipscomb : [singing]  I got a big bossman, Jes won't treat me right, Works me hard all day long, I can't sleep at night...

• Mance Lipscomb : You can't reach that big man up yonder. You jes hear about him. He gonna keep you away from him, with all that money. You know that. He gonna keep you away from him. And he was d'boss. And what he said went. You see. Everything he told them, dey had to do it. We couldn't hep ourselves. We didn't know no better. We thought that was the right way to do. We mind dat bossman and when he said somethin', whether it was wrong or right, we couldn't dispute his words. Well, we was bound down. We couldn't do nothin' but jes take it. Say, we were scared to say anything whether it was wrong or right. Cause we had men to ride over us and knock us down and shoot us down and do anything. We had to put up with it.

• [first lines] 

  Mance Lipscomb : This is Mance Lipscomb. I was born in 1895. This year it makes me 75 years of age. I've had it hard, sometimes good. And I've been a farmer all my life.

• Mance Lipscomb : [singing]  Well you ain't so big, You jes tall that's all

• Mance Lipscomb : This world was made for you and me. It don't belong to me, alone. It don't belong to you. It belongs to everybody. Now, people don't see it. They say, well, I got a part of the world that belongs to me over here or maybe I'll take the world and run it like I wanna. But, if you get that in your mind, you ain't gonna get nowhere - but in trouble or kill somebody or get killed. 'Cause this world was made for everybody.

• Mance Lipscomb : They ain't no love, they ain't no gettin' along, Always trouble, Somethin' goin' on wrong. And that's what it is trouble. But, if you love, you can give off to one another. You can sacrifice. You might have a little difficulty and say, well, she may be mad, but, if I didn't love her I wouldn't take that. Love makes you take things.

• Mance Lipscomb : If you wealthy, why, you can get a wife anywhere. If you ain't got none, she don't want you. They want you for what you got. And you want her for what she got.

• Mance Lipscomb : We got to share this thing. Combine with one another. You know what I'm lookin' to see happen? I'm lookin' to see that the young race of people gonna come and combine with one another. Black and white. If you got a little, me and you is together. If you got a heap, well, we together. We gonna be one - one nation of people.

• Mance Lipscomb : I haven't heard nobody say he whipped her anymore. I think she's the boss now. Once she shot him, he quit beatin' her, they tell me. It made a better man out of him. Before she shot that leg off, man, you couldn't hardly come up down that road where he wouldn't done somthin' bad to somebody. Maybe shootin' at somebody. Talkin' big talk to somebody. But, she broke him up from that habit of bein' bad. Made a good man out of him.

• Mance Lipscomb : Right here, I played ball here, with old rag ball, right here, at this old school, here. Wrapped it all night and maybe in the mornin' put one in our pocket and tie that up and make anotherin'. But, now you got baseball. It's a fast life we live in now. That's what's the matter. Livin' a fast life. We didn't have no bats. You know what we'd do? We'd cut a limb like that and hue it down and strike balls with it. We didn't have no bats or nothin' like that. No mitts. We caught the ball with our cap.

• Mance Lipscomb : Everybody around me call me Daddy Mance. I ain't everybody's Daddy. But, I treat 'em jes like I was their Daddy. That's what I call people creatin' love amongst people. Treat everybody the same.

• Mance Lipscomb : Don't you see what's happenin' now? Everything is a fast, fast time. Everything is movin' in a fast motion now. And if you be late, partner, you wake up in the mornin' and everybody's gone. Nobody there.

• Mance Lipscomb : Religion is a feelin'. It's not a-hollerin' and a-hoofin' or a-chiffon and a-fashion. You got to feel it. But the works, the pure works, is in this heart. Religion ain't nothin' but love. Love.

• Mance Lipscomb : You can't fool nobody now. You just got to come plane with de young people. Because, they know. See I didn't know when I was comin' up. But, you know. And you know right from wrong. And you know what people is tryin' to put on you is the wrong thing. And you ain't gonna stand that wrong thing. See, you'll fight for it. See, I run from it.

• Mance Lipscomb : The fun we got out of life was stealin' watermelons, potatoes, and goobers - peanuts, you know. Oh yeah, we used to do that when I was a boy.

• Mance Lipscomb : I could walk off and leave her gruntin', if I didn't love her. Forget about her. Go hunt another woman that ain't gruntin'.

• Mance Lipscomb : You got to make friends with people. Let 'em know who you are and you got to find out who they are.

• Mance Lipscomb : Night time is the right time to be with the one you love. Anytime of day, anytime of night, would be alright, if you get that gal.

• Mance Lipscomb : [singing]  Make a lame man run, Make a blind man see, Baby, lookin' mighty good, When you're truckin' with me, Keep on truckin'...

• Mance Lipscomb : [singing]  Searchin' the world all over, But she'll never find no one like me.

• Mance Lipscomb : I jes knows the day comin' I'm gonna die; but, I don't know how soon. I don't know how long it'll be and how I'm gonna feel when I die. Because, I never have died. I don't know how I'll feel.

  [laughs] 

• Mance Lipscomb : God made us here in this world to live peacefully and quiet and get along together. Everybody wants to be somebody - want to be the same person. Have the same feelin'. Eat the same food. Dance the same dance. Sing the same songs. We get together. Have fun together. We share together. We live out and eat and sleep together. Because you can live in heaven here on earth. Peaceful and quiet and nice to people. The way you live, the way you die. You live good, you die good - in a peaceful way.

• Mance Lipscomb : Mule die, they'd buy another. A nigger die, they'd hire another.