Black quotes
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside black — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"You absolutely feel, as a black actress, that you've got to ride the wave because there's just so few roles. I hate to play that card, but it's the truth. There's not a lot of roles."
"I sort of feel like that's the most revolutionary thing we can do with our narrative for me as Black people is to show that we are just like you."
"Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waves swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad."
"It is a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole."
"... when your name is really and truly Percy Blakeney, pronounced 'Black-knee', and you still have bad acne in your twenties, you accept Pimple as a nickname and are grateful that it wasn't anything worse."
"In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil *odegra* in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds'."
"- I notice you didn't laugh, Mr. Black! - No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day."
"We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of on good rain and black loam."
"While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster."
"I've been fortunate not to have been pigeonholed by virtue of being mixed-race, of being English and black, and by virtue of working all over the world. I've enjoyed a great degree of variety in the work that I've done. It's been quite unique."
"Gold looks good on my skin, and gold looks good on black people, I think."
"I never go black tie. I never grew up wearing ties or bow ties or anything."
"Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all."
"Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music."
""Southland" was not written for a black woman."
""Legally Blonde 2" wasn't written specifically for a black woman."
"And, for example, like, when you're having the conversation with your child about getting their driver's license. Well, a white family - their biggest fear is just that you're driving safely and that they're minding the rules of the road, whereas a black family - their biggest fear is that their child is going to get pulled over and treated unfairly for a reason that they won't understand."
"The good news for me is that I have an amazing team behind me, and they've been with me for 20 years now - almost 20 years. And they have seen me as an actress, not necessarily just a black actress. So I have been lucky enough for them to see me that way."
"Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elemental trait of painting or sculpture."
"One of the most important things is to figure out what your look is — I don't wear this black suit-white shirt combination all the time to try and be iconic — but because I'm most comfortable in this. Cary Grant never turned up in a pink jacket and hot pants and I don't feel the need to experiment when I know I like dressing this way."
