You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
Josephine BakerRead
I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the courage to escape discrimination in search of freedom.
Josephine Baker's quote highlights her profound sense of fear and discrimination, which propelled her to flee St. Louis and the United States. It speaks to the struggles faced by individuals who seek to escape oppression and find dignity and acceptance elsewhere, demonstrating the lengths one might go to in pursuit of personal freedom and safety.
In practice
In a speech about civil rights, you might say, 'As Josephine Baker once expressed, I ran away from St. Louis, seeking freedom from discrimination.'
You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.
I did take the blows [of life], but I took them with my chin up, in dignity, because I so profoundly love and respect humanity.
You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.
I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more.
Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.
I don't bang for the color or the land. I bang for the principles and for the honor. I'm bangin' for the Westside- this is in my heart, this is how I feel.
It's difficult because we tend to overrate the pain of failure. We fear it too much. That's research that emerges from psychology. We think it's going to be worse than it really is. And, I think, as we get a bit older, really after we leave school or college, we quickly stop experimenting.
I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back and pretend.
We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.
I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more, is none
Back then, as a teenager, I kept thinking, why don't the adults around here just say something? Say it so they know we don't accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there's no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.