Awareness Quotes

"Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough."

- Billie Holiday

"We were not actors but acted upon. We were not contributors, just recipients. White people enslaved us, and white people freed us. Black people could choose either to take advantage of that freedom or to squander it, as our depictions in the media seemed to suggest so many of us were doing."

- Nikole Hannah-Jones

"We must abolish the entitlement that deludes us into believing that we have the right to make assumptions about people's identities and project those assumptions onto their genders and bodies."

- Janet Mock

"We say, hold on to the real facts of history as they are, but complete such knowledge by studying also the history of races and nations which have been purposely ignored."

- Carter G. Woodson

"To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread."

- James Baldwin

"More people's lives have been shaped by violence than we like to think. And more people's lives have been shaped by silence than we think."

- Charmaine Wilkerson

"Your world is only as small as you make it."

- Gabrielle Union

"In the dark, you could never be too black. In the dark, everyone was the same color."

- Brit Bennett

"I don’t foresee, or want, a color-blind, race-neutral environment. The nineteenth century was the time for that. It’s too late now. Our race-inflected culture not only exists, it thrives. The question is whether it thrives as a virus or a bountiful harvest of possibilities."

- Toni Morrison

"It’s funny about 'passing.' We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it."

- Nella Larsen

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Won’t it be wonderful when black history and Native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history."

- Maya Angelou

"It’s important for us to also understand that the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' simply refers to the notion that there’s a specific vulnerability for African Americans that needs to be addressed. It’s not meant to suggest that other lives don’t matter. It’s to suggest that other folks aren’t experiencing this particular vulnerability."

- Barack Obama

"I swear to the Lord I still can’t see why democracy means everybody but me."

- Langston Hughes

"I’m not quite sure what freedom is, but I know damn well what it ain’t. How have we gotten so silly, I wonder."

- Assata Shakur

"During Black History Month, I’m reminded yet again of the ways that the struggle for civil rights is interwoven with the struggle for workers’ rights."

- Tom Perez

"'We, the people.’ It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787 I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in ‘We, the people.’"

- Barbara Jordan

"Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason."

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

"If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"When we’re talking about diversity, it’s not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us."

- Ava DuVernay

"The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up."

- Henry Louis Gates

"Black History Month must be more than just a month of remembrance; it should be a tribute to our history and reminder of the work that lies in the months and years ahead."

- Marty Meehan

"Black history isn't a separate history. This is all of our history, this is American history, and we need to understand that. It has such an impact on kids and their values and how they view black people."

- Karyn Parsons

"There is no vaccine for racism."

- Kamala Harris

"Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals?"

- Barack Obama

"Friendly reminder that you don't have to say the 'n word' to be racist. That's not the sole requirement. Asking people to prove racism is another tool the oppressor uses to marginalize and discredit us."

- Lizzo

"In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty."

- Christopher Morley

"You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older."

- Anouk Aimee

"The more often we see the things around us - even the beautiful and wonderful things - the more they become invisible to us. That is why we often take for granted the beauty of this world: the flowers, the trees, the birds, the clouds - even those we love. Because we see things so often, we see them less and less."

- Joseph B. Wirthlin

"It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it."

- Voltaire