Black Person Quotes

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Alice Walker

Friendship, Fake Friends, Memorable

Alice Walker (2013). “The Alice Walker Collection: Non-Fiction”, p.17, Hachette UK

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No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

Marian Wright Edelman

Inspirational, Inspiring, Dream

Marian Wright Edelman (2013). “The Measure of our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours”, p.29, Beacon Press

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The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.

Marcus Garvey

Greatness, Racism, Black

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I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.

Harriet Tubman

Hands, Black History, African American

"Harriet, The Moses of Her People". Book by Sarah H. Bradford, 1886.

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Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Barack Obama

Inspirational, Motivational, Change

Barack Obama (2008). “An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama : a Primer”, Independent Publishing Group

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I don't judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they're a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person.

Diana Ross

Gay, Color, People

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When I was in Mecca I noticed that their, they had no color problem. That they had people there whose eyes were blue and people there whose eyes were black, people whose skin was white, people whose skin was black, people whose hair was blond, people whose hair was black, from the whitest white person to the blackest black person.

Malcolm X

Eye, Hair, Blue

Source: nyx.uky.edu

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Faith is the black person's federal reserve system.

Hattie McDaniel

Black, Federal Reserve, Persons

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We are invested in being together. In having friends. In joining our lives. And yet these are the people who also fail you. And when they fail you in these ways, it signals a larger understanding about who you are as a black person in the world. It's not just a little failure for me. Its something exposed.

Claudia Rankine

People, Understanding, Black

Source: www.guernicamag.com

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Trying to find my flaws is like trying to find a black person at one of our concerts

Thom Yorke

Black, Trying, Flaws

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I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field.... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, I tell you what: These doggone white people - not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

Phil Robertson

Eye, Godly, White

"What the Duck?". Interview with Drew Magary, www.gq.com. December 17, 2013.

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I'm with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field … They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’ - not a word!

Phil Robertson

White, People, Black

"What the Duck?". www.gq.com. December 17, 2013.

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I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person.

Phil Robertson

Eye, Black, Dynasty

"What the Duck?" by Drew Magary, www.gq.com. December 17, 2013.

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It's just cheaper to be White in America than it is to be Black, because of educational advances, because of the police incidents, because of the poverty we grow up in as African-Americans. So, it's just cheaper in this country if you're born a Caucasian than being born a Black person.

Warren Ballentine

Country, Growing Up, Educational

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...people will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand...That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.

Miles Davis

Music, Hype, White

Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe (1990). “Miles”, p.251, Simon and Schuster

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Most of the things that are asked of me as a representative black person, would suggest never are we equal Americans.

Alex Haley

Black, Equal, Persons

Source: www.cbn.com

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Al Gore's Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I've never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time.

Cynthia McKinney

Tolerance, Black, Levels

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To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of huger and deprivation is to dehumanize them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid.

Nelson Mandela

Inspiring, Country, Fate

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I had explained that a woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan

Mary Daly

Funny, Humor, Equality

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Does a black person make them an African American? No. There are Hispanics that are very, very dark skinned so the word has lost its meaning, it's not a very concise or proper word to use even today and it wasn't then.

Pam Grier

Dark, African American, Black

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Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?

Myrna Loy

Play, Black, Doe

"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? . . . Twelve white men say a black man must die, and another white man sets the date and time without consulting one black person. . . . They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime . . . . Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, We, us, white folks all, have decided it's time for you to die, because this is the convenient date and time.

Ulysses S. Grant

Men, White Man, People

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As black folks we're always sensitive. As a black person it's always racial.

Jamie Foxx

Black, Sensitive, Folks

"VIBE Cover Story: Django Unchained". Interview with Erik Parker, www.vibe.com. November 28, 2012.

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Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

Whoopi Goldberg

Ideas, America, Black

The Daily Telegraph Interview, April 20, 1998.

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But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society.

Audre Lorde

Hands, White, Racism

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