Black History Quotes - Page 2

In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.

Be black, shine, aim high.

No time to marry, no time to settle down; I'm a young woman, and I ain't done runnin' around.

All business is personal...Make your friends before you need them.

Slowly we have lifeted ourselves by our own bootstraps. Step by halting step, we have beat our way back

Prejudice doesn't make me mad. It just - I guess 'pisses me off' is the word.

I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes.

The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.

I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.

I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

A woman needs someone she can trust, someone who laughs when she laughs, but who has different ideas so she can learn from and teach to them. She needs someone who will stand up with her and encourage her to be a woman-not just a female. See where you are, admit what you know, and what you need, and search for a sister friend.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.

Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.

In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.

What's shaking, chiefy baby?