Black Person Quotes

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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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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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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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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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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A black Christian is like a black person with no memory.

Chris Rock

Christian, Memories, Black

"8 Black Celebrities Who Don’t Believe In Jesus", atlantablackstar.com. August 29, 2013.

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So, to say Barack Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress.

Chris Rock

White, Black, Progress

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No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job, or simple justice.

Jimmy Carter

Education, Jobs, Opportunity

Jimmy Carter (2016). “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

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So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

Chris Rock

Beautiful, Children, Smart

Interview with Frank Rich, www.vulture.com. November 30, 2014.

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I love that as a black person I've experienced not being a minority. I think that's helped me to combat the minority mentality people can have here, which can stop them scaling the heights.

David Oyelowo

Thinking, People, Black

"'In my head, this is massive'". Interview with Emma John, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2005.

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Certainly I feel like I'm the tip of the arrow at times because certainly the national media wants to talk about the fact that I'm a black Republican and some people think of that as zany that a black person would be a conservative but to me what is zany is any person black, white, red, brown or yellow not being a conservative.

Tim Scott

Thinking, Arrows, Media

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It's time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin' black and white. You can see a black person. But now to get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - not the age, but the way of thinking. Old and new, actually... because there's so many even older people that took half their lives to reach a certain point that little kids understand now.

Jimi Hendrix

Kids, Black And White, Thinking

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There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary.

Kathryn Stockett

Winning, Two, White

Kathryn Stockett (2011). “The Help”, p.688, Penguin UK

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Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind.

Bell Hooks

Educational, Heart, Thinking

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When a black person has no electricity, no water, they call it the ghetto. When white people have no electricity and no water, they call it camping.

Carlos Mencia

Ghetto, White, People

"Mind of Mencia", www.imdb.com. (2005-).

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As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility, which I do.

Majora Carter

Motivation, Distance, Inspiration

"Greening the ghetto". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February 2006.

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NHPrimary Trivia: The Republican candidates have not spoken to a black person since Herman Cain dropped out.

Andy Borowitz

Black, Cain, Trivia

FaceBook post by Andy Borowitz from Jan 11, 2012

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I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.

Sidney Poitier

Moving, People, Black

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My dad worked two jobs and moved us to the suburbs, and just being a black person, I went through a lot of racism and being called names and being bullied every single day. And it was hard. I didn't have any friends.

Sherri Shepherd

Jobs, Dad, Names

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When I started the diamond business, no black person, period, was in it to do what we're trying to do to change the industry. So I like to do things that I see clearly that are in my, you know, scope. And then, I had to figure how I get talented or smart business people around me to execute. That's what I have to do.

Russell Simmons

Smart, People, Black

"Does Russell Simmons Serve Hip-Hop?". "News & Notes" with Farai Chideya, www.npr.org. June 4, 2007.

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I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.

Cornel West

Believe, Black, Criticism

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I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

Toni Morrison

Thinking, People, Black

"Disagree with me - but not because I'm a black woman" by Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2011.

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The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

People, Black, Painting

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