What we can see depends heavily on what our culture has trained us to look for.

- Nell Irvin Painter

Making art for me is not fun in the sense of la, la, la, la, but it's something that I find very absorbing and very satisfying.

- Nell Irvin Painter

The American sense of the importance, the fundamental importance of the black-white dichotomy, comes out of societies founded in the era of the Afric…

- Nell Irvin Painter

Science is a truth that is true no matter what, no matter when and for all time and science as the kind of gospel truth replaces the gospel, which wa…

- Nell Irvin Painter

Before science, before the eighteenth century, religion answered the questions, and so in the nineteenth century for instance there was a real jostli…

- Nell Irvin Painter

I'm a professional historian. I do my research. I have a PhD. What does my race have to do with it?

- Nell Irvin Painter

Emerson was not passionate about abolition. He wasn't a passionate person. He was a cool intellectual, and I think he probably was a little uncomfort…

- Nell Irvin Painter

Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than ha…

- Nell Irvin Painter

You need to do some work even if you have the talent. So I just went the way that was easier, the way I knew what to do, but I have always had the pl…

- Nell Irvin Painter