Bernice Johnson Reagon Quotes

Quotes about:

• Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Motivational, Stay Strong, Business

  82 Copy quote

• If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Enough, Broads, Coalitions

  33 Copy quote

• If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost, go back to the last place where you knew who you were, and what you were doing, and start from there.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Moving, Finding Yourself, Lasts

  20 Copy quote

• If every moment is sacred and if you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Crazy, Humility, Breathing

  "The Songs Are Free". Interview with Bill Moyers, billmoyers.com. February 6, 1991.

  18 Copy quote

• There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Peace, Ubuntu, People

  20 Copy quote

• If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it's probably not broad enough a coalition.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Community, Democracy, Enough

  14 Copy quote

• Today whenever women gather together it is not necessarily nurturing. It is coalition building. And if you feel the strain, you may be doing some good work.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Work, Together, May

  8 Copy quote

• Mothering/nurturing is a vital force and process establishing relationships throughout the universe.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Establishing Relationships, Process, Force

  11 Copy quote

• The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail... and I'd never heard it before in my life.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Jail, Voice, Movement

  11 Copy quote

• I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Song, Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  School, Thinking, Rights

  23 Copy quote

• It makes sense that whatever the topic is, it's more compelling if you can provide the audience with a range of perspectives, and you can cross disciplines. And you don't have to control what people take out of it.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Discipline, People, Perspective

  9 Copy quote

• Coming up in the African-American culture, we were taught that we belonged to the universe and society was wrong in the way it dealt with us. We had to learn to express and affirm values not from the winning position.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Winning, African American, Culture

  11 Copy quote

• The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Rights, Singing, Movement

  9 Copy quote

• And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Song, Thinking, Proof

  4 Copy quote

• I just don't think one person has that much to contribute to any subject

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Thinking, Persons, Subjects

  4 Copy quote

• I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Mean, Years, Twenties

  26 Copy quote

• So one of the things that happened with integration in the South is they found that the black teachers were much more educated than the white teachers.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Teacher, White, Black

  7 Copy quote

• Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn't have religion

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  People, Asking, Firsts

  10 Copy quote

• When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  School, Rights, Culture

  12 Copy quote

• Personally I discovered that you could go through the academy as a young scholar, come out, and almost immediately have an impact on the academic environment.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Impact, Environment, Academic

  9 Copy quote

• I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Rights, People, Focus

  9 Copy quote

• I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Church, Loud, Saved

  8 Copy quote

• I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975.

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  School, Festivals, Graduates

  7 Copy quote

• But I'm a historian. I wasn't interested in just being a producer, I was interested in doing research and presenting that research to a general public

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Research, Just Being, Producers

  9 Copy quote

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