You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
Josephine BakerRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education is essential for self-protection and empowerment, advocating for knowledge over violence.
In this quote, Josephine Baker emphasizes the critical importance of education as a means of self-defense and empowerment. She advocates for the power of knowledge and communication—instead of resorting to violence—as a way to navigate the world, urging individuals to acquire skills and wisdom from their educational pursuits to better protect themselves and society.
Themes
EducationSelf-ProtectionKnowledgeEmpowermentNon-Violence
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used as a motivational speech opener at a school assembly.
More from Josephine Baker
All quotes →I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.
Josephine BakerRead
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.
Josephine BakerRead
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.
Josephine BakerRead
I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more.
Josephine BakerRead
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.
Josephine BakerRead
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I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.
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It had been only through books-at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions-that I had managaed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
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