Quotes on Black History

We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!

Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

You face the biggest challenge of all: to have the courage to seek your big dream regardless of what anyone says. You are the only person alive who can see your big picture and even you can't see it all.

The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.

Each person must live their life as a model for others.

Bring on your tear gas, bring on your grenades, your new supplies of Mace, your state troopers and even your national guards. But let the record show we ain't going to be turned around.

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

If you send up a weather vane or put your thumb up in the air every time you want to do something different, to find out what people are going to think about it, you're going to limit yourself. That's a very strange way to live.

Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.

You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.

Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.

Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.