Top 160 African-American Quotes

You never hear about a pit bull doing anything good in the media. And they have a stigma to them… and, in many ways, pit bulls are like young African-American males. Whenever you see us in the news, it’s for getting shot and killed or shooting and killing somebody – for being a stereotype.

The key to empowerment is no more complicated than what Jesse Jackson said, ‘We are somebody.’ But the ‘We are somebody’ I would like to be in the larger sense: not just the urban African-American but homo sapiens in general – We are somebody.

The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs.

You know, women not making dollar for dollar the same as a man is not new. It’s been that way since day zero, since the founding of this country. And when you put African-American women and Hispanic women into the mix it’s even worse than that.

I’m African-American. I’d rather follow an African religion. That’s my heritage.

There was a lot of feeling that with an African-American president, life on the South Side of Chicago would be radically different.

Being an African-American, minority, or poor, you get in a tough situation and you don’t get a fair shake.

My father marched in Selma. My father was there in Alabama. That’s where I was born. My birth certificate says ‘colored.’ It does not say I’m African-American or black. So for me, those are real realities that are not subject to opinion.

Sex in the City was a different kind of phenomenon because of the show itself is a phenomenon and to me that’s successful because to resonate with women across the board for six years and have only one African-American actor pass through for one episode.

The African-American community still needs to come together as one and stand up for rights of the people and of what’s happening in their culture, their community.

I didn’t have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.

I’m a kid who grew up in an all African-American neighborhood and got into schools and aspired to just be me, and didn’t worry about labels or anything. Just wanted to be a success at what I did.

Most of the more celebrated names among African-American authors, poets, and artists are known to the world because of their association with specific cultural arts movements.

America was magnificently characterized in November of 2008 when we elected, for the first time, an African-American President of the United States.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

The notion of women being written out of history is as old as the Bible, but it always seems more galling when it is the history of progressive movements – such as the abolitionist campaign in Britain or the fight for African-American civil rights – in which the role of women has been diminished.

Being in the body of an African-American woman, I prefer animation. I get to be everybody. I don’t have to always be the white girl’s best friend. I can be the princess. I can make an inanimate object come to life. I can be a little boy. I can be anything.

African-American women account for 67 percent of all newly diagnosed female AIDS cases.

Like anyone else in television, I like to explore my life experience. And I don’t think African-American artists see doing shows or art about African-Americans as something ‘less than.’ I think maybe the industry sometimes does. We don’t get as much attention, we don’t get critical acclaim and so on.

Growing up in the Bible Belt of Texas, I thought for sure there was no way – if I’m 100 percent true to myself and come out as a gay, African-American person in 2015 – that people are going to be able to accept that and understand it.

Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.

I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

I learned about poise and dignity, and I learned about what it means to be an African-American in television and what that requires in terms of what kind of position you take for yourself and how you define your own reality in a world that is still finding its footing, to say the least.

It is un-American, it is unjust to target any group of folks whether they are African-American, Hispanic, poor or elderly when it comes to access to the vote.

The blues style – moody or rollicking or boastful or bashful – developed in the Delta around 1900 and was, for a time, exclusively African-American. That isn’t the case anymore.

Are things getting better with each generation? Yes. It’s quite interesting to be living in these times, for me to witness an African-American being elected president. It’s quite extraordinary.

When I was growing up and going to art school and learning about African-American art, much of it was a type of political art that was very didactic and based on the ’60s, and a social collective.

For me it’s hard, especially being a young African-American woman. My dad doesn’t look like what you might call the ‘safe’ African-American male that America would accept, if you know what I mean.

Children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States.

I’m African-American. There are more eyes on me than anybody. They’re going to take the negative before the positive.

At Harvard I was taking an African-American studies class, and we were reading about the tragic mulatto. Invariably, the tragic mulatto can’t fit in either world and flings herself off a bridge. So I’m reading, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I think I’m in literature,’ but my life was never like that.

Mostly I’m proud to be an African-American woman, but I’m glad I have a universal look as well.

I think that the people who come from communities like me as an African-American woman, as a member of the LGBT community, we haven’t sat in the corners of power.

New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It’s old, dynamic, African-American, Latino.

Republicans have called for a National African-American Museum. The plan is being held up by finding a location that isn’t in their neighborhood.

Like I said, being an African-American man, you can tell there’s two Americas we’re living in. They don’t want us to be equal.

I date African-American women. That’s all I date. In my family, it was never discussed – but I love black women. Nothing beats a sister. However, when you see a female like Jennifer Lopez, you have to acknowledge that there are many beautiful Latino women as well.

I was an English major in college who concentrated in African-American literature and culture. So I read quite a few slave narratives and stories of escape, and I grew up in Ohio, which was a common stop on the Underground Railroad.

Stand-ups are always good to see on YouTube. There’s a guy named Mike Head who lives in Cleveland. He’s great. He’s an African-American stand-up.

My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn’t have a lot of access or history to that line of my family.

Ali was the African-American who exulted in saying exactly what he was capable of, and the bouncing-boy braggadocio of hip-hop is impossible to imagine without him. So it makes sense that one of his spiritual children, the sunny-dispositioned rapper turned actor Will Smith, would play him.

Young African-American males: Stop existing. It could get you killed.

The classic rules of American politics are dying, if not dead, if you look at the last two presidential elections. An African-American could never be president until one was; a TV reality star couldn’t become president until one was.

I am extremely ecstatic about the presidency of Barack Obama. I think he is paving the way for young African-American men like myself. I have very high expectations for Obama, and I am extremely hopeful that he will bring great lasting change not just to America, but to the entire world.

I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It’s the foundation of rock and roll.

Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that’s O.K. I am working in the African-American literary tradition. That’s my aim and what I see as my mission.

My African-American friends thought it was cool that I was racing. It’s not like we had any role models out there to look up to, so everyone understood I was doing something very different.

My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood.

I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don’t have to be defined by that.

It’s just surreal because I get to empower other little African-American girls around the world and say that you can be a superhero, and you rock, and you can conquer the world, and you are beautiful just the way you are, and your flaws are nothing, and you’re awesome.