Prince
Musician, Singer, Songwriter
"I have written a song that says: If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words, "They're gone," and they'll come back."
African American quotes
African American
493 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Angela Davis
Political Activist, Scholar
"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."
George Washington Carver
Agricultural Scientist, Inventor
"No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it."
Shirley Chisholm
Politician, Educator
"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."
Billie Holiday
Singer
"Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside african american — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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African American quotes (page 1 of 25)
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"I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner."
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"The possible has been tried and failed. Now it's time to try the impossible."
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"The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible"
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"Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude."
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"One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been that I have never stopped learning about Good Cooking and Good Food"
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"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."
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"It's not what you achieve in life, but who you become as a person due to those achievements."
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"Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form."
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"I am the dream and the hope of the slave"
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"I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed."
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"Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires."
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"Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence."
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"I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too."
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"When the storm has passed, put your energy into rebuilding your life, don't waste time looking back."
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"I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know."
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"It's a great thing about being a musician; you don't stop until the day you die, you can improve. So it's a wonderful thing to do."
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"We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor."
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"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
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"It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing."
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"I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive."
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