White quotes
4.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside white — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It's when I make a joke about Indian people and then a white person comes up to me and says, "That's wrong. You should not talk about Indian people," and the Indian people are over in the audience like, "I thought that joke was hilarious." That is so weird. Then why are you getting mad? You're burning unnecessary calories. You're getting made for the sake of getting mad. I don't understand it."
"Sighing restlessly, the boundless sea broke huge rollers into white cream which hissed hungrily up to the tideline."
"In comedy timing is everything, but Betty White is the rarest of comics who seems to have mastered time itself."
"My comedy has no color, it's for everybody, black, white, Latino, Asian. It's not a pro-black show, not a def jam show; it's just straight, wholesome type of humor."
"I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio."
"A poor white woman from the South is different than a poor black woman from the South, and has a completely different experience."
"The big guys, the big dogs, are going to own everything from the White House to the courthouse."
"White Hot Concentration is the unappreciated fruit of hard ligting, especially squats. When your in the squat rack, with a serious amount of weight overhead, your life literally depends on maintaining concentration. You learn to block out the swirling images in the mirror, the obnoxious chatter of the people next to you, the fat drop of sweat running down your nose. Once you've mastered this concentration in the weight room, duplicating it on the race course is relatively easy. Champions have only a few things in common. One weapon they all possess is White Hot Concentration."
"There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to people of white skin.... The more I feel like an American, the more the situation pains me."
"The poet is born with the capacity of arranging words in such a way that something of the quality of the graces and inspirations he has received can make itself felt to other human beings in the white spaces, so to speak, between the lines of his verse. This is a great and precious gift; but if the poet remains content with his gift, if he persists in worshipping the beauty in art and nature without going on to make himself capable, through selflessness, of apprehending Beauty as it is in the divine Ground, then he is only an idolater."
"When the nuclear weapons were sent to the racist South African government, where a few million white people subjugated more than 13 million black people, it was so they could use them against the Cuban forces that were defending Angola. These things have not been written down but they need to be told as part of the reality of history which should not be distorted the way the historians connected to the power elite tend to do."
"We were trying to transform America, not triumph over white folk."
"I was much more comfortable and a much better congressman running in a district that was 37 percent black, where I had to have a white constituency to get elected, than I would have been if I was in a 75 percent black district."
"I've really hung in there with my BlackBerry. The main reason I like it better than an iPhone is that I can type better. I saw Rachel Zoe using a white one and I was jealous. The risk, of course, is that it could look like a Lady BIC. I've just learned to own it though."
"We all have the dark, ignorant shadow inside us. I have worked endlessly to reveal it and heal it in me, but of course there's some primitive weird stuff in me. The Tea Party is about exhorting white supremacy, though, so I've had a tiny bit of trouble experiencing sympathy."
"Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what she thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what her painting isn't, until she finally finds out what it is. And when you finally do find out what one corner of your vision is; you're off and running."
"As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say . . . as long as he looks to white folks for approval . . . then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about."
"As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites."
"Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal."
"I loved most when his eyelashes twitched and he blinked, and suddenly happiness was there inside his eyes. Unmistakable. Like a single word printed on a clean white page."
