Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was born black and female.
One for whom bread- food- is not enough.
Never be afraid to sit a while and think.
That's what being eccentric means--being natural.
Everybody talking 'bout heaven ain't going there!
Take away the violence and who will hear the man of peace?
Take away the violence and who will hear the men of peace?
Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.
I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!" "Finish your eggs first.
I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.
Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.
I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!
Children see things very well sometimes - and idealists even better.
Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women
Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.
American straightforwardness is almost as disarming as Americans invariably think it is.
The problem in the world is the oppression of man by man; it this which threatens existence.
Once upon a time freedom used to be life-now it's money. I guess the world really do change.
It's dangerous, son.' 'What's dangerous?' 'When a man goes outside his house to look for peace.
There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.
There is always something left to love. And if you haven't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.
The why of why we are here is an intrigue for adolescents; the how is what must command the living.
Mama - Mama - I want so many things... I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy.
The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love.
I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.
One cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know and read of the miseries which affect the world.
When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven.
As of today, if I am asked abroad if I am a free citizen of the United States of America, I must only say what is true: No.
Once I'm on the phone, I just can't say no. I sometimes find myself doing things for three or four organizations in one day.
Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.
I live in the Village, and the way it's been, people sort of drop in on me and my husband. My husband is Robert Nemiroff, and he, too, is a writer.
I don't want to have anyone else to do my housework. I've always done it myself. I believe you should do it yourself. I feel very strongly about that.
This is one of the glories of man, the inventiveness of the human mind and the human spirit: whenever life doesn't seem to give an answer, we create one.
Though it be a thrilling and marvellous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so - doubly dynamic - to be young, gifted and black.
Sometimes, I can see the future stretched out in front of me - just as plain as day. The future hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me.
Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey! ... Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress...
Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually -- without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts? This is what I puzzle about.
The grim possibility is that she who 'hides her brains' will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with 'hidden brains' or none at all.
The whole realm of morality and ethics is something that has escaped the attention of women, by and large. And it needs the attention of intellectual women most desperately.
I have long since passed that period when I felt personal discomfort at the sight of an ill-dressed or illiterate Negro. Social awareness has taught me where to lay the blame.
[T]here is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture -- in front of us -- our own little mirage that we think is the future.
A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men - and people in general.
It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively.
Beneatha: You didn't tell us what Alaiyo means... for all I know, you might be calling me Little Idiot or something... ... Asagai: It means... it means One for Whom Bread--Food--Is Not Enough.
If, by some miracle, women should not ever utter a single protest against their condition, there would still exist among men those who could not endure in peace until her liberation had been achieved.
I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.
There may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma.
Men continue to misinterpret the second-rate status of women as implying a privileged status for themselves; heterosexuals think the same way about homosexuals; gentiles about Jews; whites about blacks; haves about have-nots.
Daddy felt that this country was hopeless in its treatment of Negroes. So he became a refugee from America. He bought a house in Polanco, a suburb of Mexico City, and we were planning to move there when he died. I was fourteen at the time.