Race quotes
4.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside race — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth."
"Once you become dedicated to a cause, personal security is not the goal. What will happen to you personally does not matter. My cause, my race, is worth dying for."
"High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor . . ."
"I'm a tired runner in the human race."
"The so called white races are really pinko-grey."
"I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human race, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family."
"He reflected on the decay of mankind-the decline of the human race into folly and weakness and rottenness. 'Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct' was his motto."
"[During the Renaissance] the Italians said, "We are one in the Father: we will go back." The Northern races said, "We are one in Christ, we will go on."
"The Intelligentsia (scientists apart) are losing all touch with, and all influence over, nearly the whole human race. Our most esteemed poets and critics are read by our most esteemed critics and poets (who don't usually like them much) and nobody else takes any notice. An increasing number of highly literate people simply ignore what the 'Highbrows' are doing. It says nothing to them. The Highbrows in return ignore and insult them."
"The international community cannot accept that whole communities are marginalized because of the color of their skin. People of African descent are among those most affected by racism. Too often, they face denial of basic rights such as access to quality health services and education. Such fundamental wrongs have a long and terrible history."
"There are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived."
"Now, I've lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago no matter what some folks say. You can see it not just in statistics, you see it in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum. But we're not where we need to be. And all of us have more work to do."
"Even when our heart aches, we summon the strength that maybe we didn't even know we had, and we carry on; we finish the race."
"I don’t believe it is possible to transcend race in this country. Race is a factor in this society. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery has not gone away. It is not an accident that African-Americans experience high crime rates, are poor, and have less wealth. It is a direct result of our racial history."
"I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can't just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system."
"If we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas... Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy... Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer's... Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race."
"I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now."
"When you're out of work and you can't buy a home or you've lost your home and you're worried about paying your bills, then you become more worried about what other folks are doing. And sometimes that organizes itself around kind of a tribal attitude, and issues of race become more prominent."
"The changes in thinking about same-sex marriage have come slowly at first and then in rapid course. If such change is possible in this area, is it also possible in the vexed and sordid realm of race relations?"
"The other reason might be that you want to talk to voters when you've got seven primaries in seven days. Understand what's happened in this race - where we campaign actively in a state, and voters have the chance to see me directly, they check under the hood, and they kick the tires, when we don't have as much time."
