Top 585 Black Quotes

When I first appeared, people couldn’t figure out whether I was gay, straight, black, white or whatever, and I loved that. I loved the fact it scares people.

But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people.

I was bused to a school in Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn in 1972. I was one of the first black kids in the history of the school.

There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions – not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.

After the Civil War, when blacks fought along whites to secure freedom for all, southern states enacted Black Codes, laws that restricted the civil rights and liberties of blacks. Central to the enforcement of these laws were the stiff penalties for blacks possessing firearms.

What we’re doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They’re not just mythic heroes.

I try to speak my points of view about black America, and how I feel about black men and the role that black men should play in their lives with their children and in their lives with their women.

Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.

The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?

When I introduced a black soldier, Lt. Flap, in 1971, the Stars and Stripes banned the strip. They were having racial problems and thought it would increase the tensions.

The album ‘Hoodie SZN’ is about the result of where I come from: it gave me this black heart. And the black heart represents depression.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

Now we have black and white elected officials working together. Today, we have gone beyond just passing laws. Now we have to create a sense that we are one community, one family. Really, we are the American family.

If I’m going to work, I put black jeans on, a T-shirt, a shirt, and a jacket.

If you want to see a black hole tonight, tonight just look in the direction of Sagittarius, the constellation. That’s the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and there’s a raging black hole at the very center of that constellation that holds the galaxy together.

Even as someone who’s labeled a conservative – I’m a Republican I’m black, I’m heading up this organization in the Reagan administration – I can say that conservatives don’t exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they’re welcome.

I think everybody has the ability to fall in love with a man or with a woman or a white person or a black person or a Jewish person or a Protestant person or whatever.

How do you observe something you can’t see? This is the basic question of somebody who’s interested in finding and studying black holes. Because black holes are objects whose pull of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape it, not even light, so you can’t see it directly.

Black Lives Matter started from a post that I put on Facebook after the acquittal of George Zimmerman. I woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, just trying to process what had happened and wanting to find community around being in a lot of grief and having a lot of rage.

Just simple things – I like black and white, monochrome; I like suits.

I always tried to stand out as a ref. I wore a long-sleeve black Under Armour t-shirt so that you knew I was the cool ref as opposed to the old dude.

My mixed-race background made me a broad person, able to relate to different cultures. But any woman of colour, even a mixed colour, is seen as black in America. So that’s how I regard myself.

It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.

At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that’s good.

All my life I had a rapport with black caddies.

Black culture is something I don’t relate to much at all.

When I sing, I don’t want them to see that my face is black. I don’t want them to see that my face is white. I want them to see my soul. And that is colorless.

I wasn’t shy, but I was really hyper. Nobody got my sense of humor. I was a black skater kid.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the question has to be positively negative.

However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.

The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.

I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.

The danger to a black child in America is not a white police officer. The danger is another black.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can.

I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother’s a black woman, South African Xhosa woman… and my father’s Swiss, from Switzerland.

Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.

Hip-hop is very diverse, but if you only focus on one aspect of it, then what you get is this image of Black America that is completely contrary to what actually goes on.

All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

Showtime has given new, young filmmakers – black, white, across the board – an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.

Even though it’s called Music Of Black Origin, it’s not just music for black people. Music is for everybody. I think it’s good that black music is acknowledged, and it’s open for lots of artists, including white artists who have been inspired by black musical heritage.

Black people dominate sports in the United States. 20% of the population and 90% of the final four.

Black cats cross my path all the time. I’ll break a mirror. I have no regard for superstition.

Until Lee Elder, the only blacks at the Masters were caddies or waiters. To ask a black man what he feels about the traditions of the Masters is like asking him how he feels about his forefathers who were slaves.

I think it’s good that YouTube decided that they really want to showcase Black talent.

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.

I’m a TV junkie, so it’s hard to choose just one. Currently I’m a slave to ‘Black Sails,’ ‘Vikings,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Mindy Project.’

I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.

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.