Black quotes
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside black — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"The trick generally is to break programs into pieces and have those pieces be individually testable and so then when you move on to the other pieces you treat it as a black box knowing that it either works or doesn't work."
"I always thought the best kind of sunglasses are the motorcycle helmets with the black plastic masks on them. That way, nobody can recognize the back of your head either."
"The film Black Hawk Down paints the Somali people as wild savages."
"The man on the radio says Elvis Presley's died. We drove to Memphis, the sky was hard and black."
"If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself."
"I'm thinking about some developments say in the 80s when the anti-apartheid movement began to claim more support and strength within the US. Black trade unionists played a really important role in developing this US anti-apartheid movement."
"I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates."
"Every person that steps up and commits to social change helps solidify the black movement cause. It is not easy for those who fill in the leader role."
"I just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton. In order to see the film, I had to get on the bus and travel quite a ways to get to an arthouse theater - none of which you're gonna find in black and brown communities - to see anything that was outside of what the studios fed me, and that's not the case anymore."
"I almost never do anything for Black History Month, because I feel it's just another way to separate us."
"I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here."
"When I was in high school if you were black and lived in Detroit, and you wanted to drive down to Florida to go on vacation, you had to plan to drive all the way through, because you couldn't stop in a hotel all the way through South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. We can't even fathom such a thing now, can we?"
"Why do you wear a mask and hood?" I think everybody will in the near future," was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable."
"Tr...ooooo...luv...' Fezzik grabbed onto Inigo in panic and they both pivoted, staring at the man in black, who was silent again. '"True love," he said,' Inigo cried. 'You heard him - true love is what he wants to come back for. That's certainly worthwhile.' 'Sonny, don't you tell me what's worthwhile - true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that."
"In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient."
"Haply for I am black, And have not those soft parts of conversation That chamberers have; or for I am declined Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much— She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage, That we can call these delicate creatures ours And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad And live upon the vapor of a dungeon Than keep a corner in the thing I love For others’ uses. Yet ’tis the plague of great ones; Prerogatived are they less than the base. ’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death."
"O wretched state! o bosom black as death!"
"No visor does become black villainy so well as soft and tender flattery."
"An old black ram is tupping your white ewe"
"In Men in Black, it was a very small character, no pun intended."
