Top 50 Ruby Dee Quotes

A nation’s youths shouldn’t be sent off to die.

You have to learn how to be married. You have to learn to love somebody.

Life can’t die. It’s a contradiction.

Black History Month is fine, but we need more months of the year to celebrate all the people on this earth. After all, we’re all creatures of the same God.

Before I latched onto the concept of stereotypes, not once did I reckon with the fact that I would never be a ‘Hollywood starlet.’

My constant battle is putting aside time wasters, and I have to watch out for procrastination. Staying on the path of something you’re trying to create has much to do with having confidence in yourself and in your capacity to realize the things you want out of life.

My whole life is not defined by what Hollywood does.

I don’t think the arts would have been as meaningful to me if I hadn’t grown up in Harlem.

I didn’t have the kind of talent or personality that kept me dreaming about Hollywood. They don’t hire little colored girls to do this or that. After I got that in my head, I took another direction.

I remember street corners and pickets and parades. That’s what I got teethed on.

We are all a tiger with feelings. An elephant who never forgets. We are tiger, panther, monkey – we are all of these things, all of the life rhythms.

Marriage, like love, is an aspiration. It’s a process.

The Divine Impulse – it’s always safe to follow it. We’ve got to trust it and go wherever it takes us. Especially women.

You’re not supposed to go into business with the sole purpose of putting your neighbor out of business. This is not the United States of Corporate America.

Just staying together is not a real virtue, if you’re not happy. Or you’re being denied. Or one person is being squashed. Or you really don’t love each other; you’re just there out of habit. That doesn’t work, no matter how many years you stay together.

I really don’t believe in retiring as long as you can breathe.

You should always be prepared to win. But as much as I tell myself that, I’ve accepted another kind of role. Racism undercuts expectation, something like that. I’m not saying that to excuse myself from anything, but I’ve lived all this time, and things don’t happen.

My experience for myself as a performer is not one of high expectations.

You can only appreciate freedom when you find yourself in a position to fight for someone else’s freedom and not worry about your own.

Oh, I’m impressed with Lorraine Hansberry. She was a genius at whose feet I could sit.

I’m proud of doing ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night,’ for which I won an ACE award.

God has use for all the old people.

When I was young, I dreamt of being a starlet in Hollywood. But there comes a point in every African American’s life when you realize the limitations, that you could only play maids or some little supporting role. Even Lena Horne couldn’t get good parts.

I never thought about myself as an activist when we were coming along. I love the people I love. I didn’t care whether they could be a Democrat, Republican, communist… anything but a racist.

One reason I didn’t trust my writing for so long was that I always considered myself a serious dramatic actor. But people would always laugh when I shared my writing with them. It took my husband to help me see that I really am part humorist.

I think I have something unique that I’d like to share.

I don’t remember, as a child, feeling a lack of anything.

I have this deep love for authors. I think that we don’t do enough to encourage love of words and love of books.

Black women have to know the historical and everyday struggles of black men, and our men have to know the struggles of black women in America.

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.

I think the poets and musicians, they belong to everybody.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to be a dreamer under any circumstances.

You hear people say, ‘We take our Tennessee Williams very seriously. There is no laughter here.’ It’s full of humor! Not to laugh is a big, bad mistake!

I’m an actor who appreciates direction.

Marriage is more complex than we think.

Gangsters lived in the neighborhood. They weren’t apart from it. Their relationships with people were both benevolent and scary.

You can’t be all you are meant to be if you think you are better than others, and you can’t be all you are meant to be if you think you are less than others, either.

I’d come from a background in New York of picketing and protesting.

Is it safe and sane to only have one political and economic system by which everyone in the world can live? Or can we explore and share? God never made one of anything.

I’m very much interested in getting prisons off the stock market. I’m very much interested in upgrading the public school system… and taking a second look at capital punishment.

I don’t know who I would be if I weren’t this child from Harlem, this woman from Harlem. It’s in me so deep.

Racism is a very insidious thing. It’s dangerous to the psyche, to mind and body. It erodes the self-confidence. And I don’t know how we get through it.

The white actresses I have known have been allowed to do 10 times more than I shall ever do.

My stepmother wanted to be an actress.

‘Commitment’ is a marvelous word.

The nature of racism is that it grinds down the soul of the man more finely than it does the soul of the woman. When you want to conquer a people or subject it, you destroy the male component.

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within – strength, courage, dignity.

Well, I didn’t grow up with that word ‘retirement’ as part of my consciousness. I didn’t grow up with professionals that retired. I thought retiring was when you are tired and go to bed.

Marriage is really an exciting adventure.

I do remember the numbers runners, I do remember the poverty and bread lines. Harlem stays with you forever.