Quotes on African American

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.

You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American.

I knew well that the only way I could get that door open was to knock it down; because I knocked all of them down.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class - it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.

They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.

The acceptance of the facts of African-American history and the African-American historian as a legitimate part of the academic community did not come easily. Slavery ended and left its false images of black people intact.

I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me.

You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

I'd like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.

We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.

I used to want the words 'She tried' on my tombstone. Now I want 'She did it.'

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.

Don't bring negative to my door.

Where there is no vision, there is no hope.

But one of the things I have learned during the time I have spent in the United States is an old African American saying: Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.