To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.
Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.
I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.
I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.
You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.
I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.
One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.
You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.
Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.
The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts.
Art is an elastic sort of love.
I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.
All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.
A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.
I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed.
We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.
I did take the blows [of life], but I took them with my chin up, in dignity, because I so profoundly love and respect humanity.
Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?
I believe in prayer. It's the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.
Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.
God dislikes evil, and no happiness can be built on hate. Love one another as brothers.
...It looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty, the freedom to go where one chose if one was held back by one's color? No, I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made no promises." ~ Josephine Baker, once she had seen the Eiffel Tower
One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.
