Timeless Inspiration: Famous African American Quotes That Empower and Uplift

"There's nothing easy about finding your way through a world loaded with obstacles that others can't or don't see."

- Michelle Obama

"A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end."

- Michelle Obama

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"I believe that each of us carries a bit of inner brightness, something entirely unique and individual, a flame that's worth protecting. When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it. When we learn to foster what's unique in the people around us, we become better able to build compassionate communities and make meaningful change."

- Michelle Obama

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am."

- Michelle Obama

"Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them."

- Madam C.J. Walker

"We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends."

- Mary McLeod Bethune

"Never limit yourself because of other’s limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination."

- Mae Jemison

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."

- Langston Hughes

"If there is a book that you want to read, but hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it."

- Toni Morrison

"You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea."

- Medgar Evers

"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."

- Maya Angelou

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

- Maya Angelou

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing."

- Muhammad Ali

"We all have dreams. In order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort."

- Jesse Owens

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

- Taylor Swift

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."

- Harriet Tubman

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

- Colin Powell

"Dreams are lovely but they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change."

- Shonda Rhimes

"These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country."

- Harry Belafonte

"If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds."

- Jesse Jackson

"Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself."

- Oprah Winfrey

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

- Nelson Mandela

"I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me."

- Muhammad Ali

"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort."

- Jesse Owens

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

- Michael Jordan

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

- Barack Obama

"I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."

- Michael Jordan

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

- Frederick Douglass

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."

- Langston Hughes

"I came to love the men and women I worked with: the single mom living on a ravaged block who somehow got all four children through college; the Irish priest who threw open the church doors every evening so that kids had an option other than gangs; the laid-off steelworker who went back to school to become a social worker. Their stories of hardship and their modest victories confirmed for me again and again the basic decency of people... Through them, I resolved the lingering questions of my racial identity. For it turned out there was no single way to be Black; just trying to be a good man was enough."

- Barack Obama

"The time is always right to do what is right."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."

- Booker T. Washington

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

- Michael Jordan

"Truth is powerful and it prevails."

- Sojourner Truth

"Just don't give up what you're trying to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."

- Ella Fitzgerald

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

- Rosa Parks

"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth."

- James Baldwin

"You really can change the world if you care enough."

- Marian Wright Edelman

"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude."

- Colin Powell

"My humanness doesn’t insulate me from racism or sexism. In fact, I think I can deal effectively with the world precisely because I am a black woman who is so comfortable in my black-womanness. I know what I can accomplish. And anything I have accomplished, I did so not in spite of being a black woman, but because I am a black woman."

- Gabrielle Union

"Self-definition and self-determination is about the many varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create, and evolve into who we know ourselves to be. It’s okay if your personal definition is in a constant state of flux as you navigate the world."

- Janet Mock

"You have to give yourself permission, even when you’re doing it."

- Toni Morrison

"In pursuing your highest ambitions, don’t let your personal safety diminish the safety of your stepsister. In wielding the power that is deservedly yours, don’t permit it to enslave your stepsisters. Let your might and your power emanate from that place in you that is nurturing and caring."

- Toni Morrison

"One light feeds another. One strong family lends strength to more. One engaged community can ignite those around it. This is the power of the light we carry."

- Michelle Obama

"You have to believe in yourself when no one else does -- that makes you a winner right there."

- Venus Williams

"Freedom is never given; it is won."

- A. Philip Randolph

"When Black women assert themselves, that somehow threatens people. This happens in retail situations, corporate offices, and school hallways. A Black woman can be minding her own business, and how she responds to provocation or even a random question will be used against her."

- Gabrielle Union

"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

"Just walking through this life as a Black person, and actually surviving that, was and still is an ovation-worthy performance."

- Cicely Tyson

"My parents gave me the pep talk when I started school, the same speech all black parents give their kids: You're gonna have to be bigger, badder, better, just to be considered equal. You're gonna have to do twice as much work and you're not going to get any credit for your accomplishments or for overcoming adversity. Most black people grow accustomed to the fact that we have to excel just to be seen as existing, and this is a lesson passed down from generation to generation."

- Gabrielle Union

"And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become."

- James Baldwin

"The price of equality, or at least of the promise of an equal society, is vigilance against those who would make government the tool of hierarchy."

- Nikole Hannah-Jones

"When I found I had crossed that line, [on her first escape from slavery, 1845] I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything."

- Harriet Tubman

"Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them."

- Assata Shakur

"Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part. And if we believe in the change we seek, then it is easy to commit to doing all we can, because the responsibility is ours alone to build a better society and a more peaceful world."

- John Lewis

"I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."

- Malcolm X

"To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships."

- W.E.B. DuBois

"I believe my purpose is to bring joy to people, to make them laugh, and to share my story to help them. To show people that no matter what, they matter, and they can succeed. No matter how bad things go, no matter how dark your life is, there is a reason for it. You can find beauty in it, and you can get better. I know, because I’ve done it."

- Tiffany Haddish

"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."

- Maya Angelou

"All of us—who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries—were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system."

- Malcolm X

"Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other peoples’ freedom as well."

- Assata Shakur

"You can't just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream. You've got to get out there and make it happen for yourself."

- Diana Ross

"I admit that the slave does sometimes sing, dance and appear to be merry. But what does this prove? It only proves to my mind, that though slavery is armed with a thousand stings, it is not able entirely to kill the elastic spirit of the bondman."

- Frederick Douglass

"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

"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat."

- Ralph Ellison

"It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate."

- James Baldwin

"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

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

- Robert F. Kennedy

"Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral. Pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change."

- Shonda Rhimes

"Have a vision. Be demanding."

- Colin Powell

"I knew my life would be a fight, and I realized this: I had it in me."

- Viola Davis

"I learnt that the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it, even if in the beginning you think you can’t do it at all."

- Langston Hughes

"When your dreams are bigger than the places you find yourself in, sometimes you need to seek out your own reminders that there is more. And there is always more waiting for you on the other side of fear."

- Elaine Welteroth

"Courage does not always roar."

- Tomi Adeyemi

"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

- Audre Lorde

"Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations."

- Dr. Mae Jemison

"Don’t let anybody, anybody convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It must be the way it ought to be."

- Toni Morrison

"If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything... that smacks of discrimination or slander."

- Mary McLeod Bethune

"No man knows what he can do until he tries."

- Carter G. Woodson

"Here’s to us being afraid and doing it anyway."

- Gabrielle Union

"That's all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don't know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won't matter if we don't survive these times."

- Octavia E. Butler

"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

- Booker T. Washington

"Believe in yourself and have confidence that you can compete against all odds. Have a vision of what you'd like to accomplish and be able to articulate that vision."

- Robert Johnson

"Be brave. Be amazing. Be worthy."

- Shonda Rhimes

"To those who’ve survived: Breathe. That’s it. Once more. Good. You’re good. Even if you’re not, you’re alive. That is a victory."

- N. K. Jemisin

"The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."

- Malcolm X

"One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings."

- Franklin Thomas

"Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read... Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds."

- Roxane Gay

"When I dare to be powerful to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

- Audre Lorde

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

- Maya Angelou

"Knowing your generational story firms the ground upon which you stand. It makes your life, your struggles and triumphs, bigger than your lone existence. It connects you to a grand plotline."

- Cicely Tyson

"We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers. Our abundance has brought us neither peace of mind nor serenity of spirit."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard."

- Ta-Nehisi Coates

"The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression."

- W.E.B. Du Bois

"I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know."

- W.E.B. Du Bois

"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."

- Nelson Mandela

"You hand us the fatback of a pig and we use it to make savory greens. You hand us a fledgling radio station and we turn it into a media empire ... We are alchemists. So our ability to transform our lived experience—even the ones plagued by trauma—is the very reason why we should internalize our acceptance and release ourselves from any obligation to be something other than who we are, individually and collectively."

- Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts

"Real education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better."

- Carter G. Woodson

"Revolution is about change, and the first place the change begins is in yourself."

- Assata Shakur

"I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear."

- Rosa Parks

"Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us."

- Susan L. Taylor

"He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."

- Muhammad Ali

"Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own."

- Michelle Obama

"One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves."

- Barbara Jordan

"History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning."

- Carter G. Woodson

"I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man."

- Frederick Douglass

"We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."

- Maya Angelou

"For every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others. And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in."

- Michelle Obama

"I believe in living. I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth. And I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided him to port."

- Assata Shakur

"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation."

- Arthur Ashe

"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."

- Wilma Rudolph

"If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others."

- Michelle Obama

"Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it."

- Ralph Ellison

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

- Nelson Mandela

"Pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you."

- Maya Angelou

"Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you’re willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by."

- Barack Obama

"Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not."

- Oprah Winfrey

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence."

- Frederick Douglass

"Social transformation is not measured in weeks or months, but in generation."

- Cicely Tyson

"We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation’s greatness."

- Yvette Clarke

"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."

- Desmond Tutu

"Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated."

- Coretta Scott King

"The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind."

- Maya Angelou

"Where there is no vision, there is no hope."

- George Washington Carver

"I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great."

- Ray Charles

"All kids need is a little help, a little hope and somebody who believes in them."

- Magic Johnson

"Age is no barrier. It's a limitation you put on your mind."

- Jackie Joyner-Kersee

"Within our dreams and aspirations, we find our opportunities."

- Sugar Ray Leonard

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."

- Jackie Robinson

"You can always become better."

- Tiger Woods

"Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences."

- Marcus Garvey

"Character is power."

- Booker T. Washington

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."

- Malcolm X

"The soul that is within me no man can degrade."

- Frederick Douglass

"Have a vision of excellence, a dream of success, and work like hell."

- Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook

"I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up."

- Rosa Parks

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

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The majority of the Negroes who took part in the year-long boycott of Montgomery's buses were poor and untutored; but they understood the essence of the Montgomery movement; one elderly woman summed it up for the rest. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered: ‘My feet is tired, but my soul is at rest.’"

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life."

- Marcus Garvey

"I am lucky that whatever fear I have inside me, my desire to win is always stronger."

- Serena Williams

"As black women, we’re always given these seemingly devastating experiences — experiences that could absolutely break us. But what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly. What we do as black women is take the worst situations and create from that point."

- Viola Davis

"Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion, you’re wasting your life."

- Jackie Robinson

"If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."

- Shirley Chisholm

"I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that’s from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter."

- Jay-Z

"We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right."

- Aretha Franklin

"If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it."

- Toni Morrison

"There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made."

- Michelle Obama

"If you don’t have confidence, you’ll always find a way not to win."

- Carl Lewis

"Don’t let anything stop you. There will be times when you’ll be disappointed, but you can’t stop."

- Sadie T. M. Alexander

"Life has two rules: number 1, never quit! Number 2, always remember rule number one."

- Duke Ellington

"A man without knowledge of himself and his heritage is like a tree without roots."

- Dick Gregory

"If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go."

- James Baldwin

"We have a wonderful history behind us…and it is going to inspire us to greater achievements."

- Carter G. Woodson

"When I look at the future, it’s so bright it burns my eyes."

- Oprah Winfrey

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

- Alice Walker

"You are your best thing."

- Toni Morrison

"I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black; it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect."

- June Jordan

"I need to see my own beauty and to continue to be reminded that I am enough, that I am worthy of love without effort, that I am beautiful, that the texture of my hair and that the shape of my curves, the size of my lips, the color of my skin, and the feelings that I have are all worthy and okay."

- Tracee Ellis Ross

"Even if it makes others uncomfortable, I will love who I am."

- Janelle Monáe

"You are where you are today because you stand on somebody’s shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself. If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It’s the quid pro quo of life. We exist temporarily through what we take, but we live forever through what we give."

- Vernon Jordan

"Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. Thy claim it as their own and none can keep it from them."

- Kwame Nkrumah

"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."

- Madam C.J. Walker

"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."

- Ida B. Wells

"I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me."

- Harriet Tubman

"Make a difference about something other than yourselves."

- Toni Morrison

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."

- Arthur Ashe

"God’s time [Emancipation] is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free."

- Harriet Tubman

"The best way to make dreams come true is to wake up."

- Mae C. Jemison

"The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that's where it's at."

- Jesse Owens

"We will all, at some point, encounter hurdles to gaining access and entry, moving up and conquering self-doubt; but on the other side is the capacity to own opportunity and tell our own story."

- Stacey Abrams

"The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being."

- Toni Morrison

"The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward."

- Ijeoma Oluo

"Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part."

- John Lewis

"Activism is my rent for living on the planet."

- Alice Walker

"In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist."

- Angela Davis

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others."

- Rosa Parks

"You have to be prepared to die before you can be prepared to live."

- Fred Shuttlesworth

"The best way to guarantee a loss is to quit."

- Morgan Freeman

"To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed."

- Sidney Poitier

"You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That's a part of it."

- Denzel Washington

"I have had one goal in my life, that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me."

- Percy Lavon Julian

"The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people."

- Chadwick Boseman

"Don't let people disrespect you. My mom says don't open the door to the devil. Surround yourself with positive people."

- Cuba Gooding Jr.

"In order to be the best version of yourself, you have to dedicate time, effort, and support to other people who need it."

- Laurence Fishburne

"You learn more in failure than you ever do in success."

- Jay Z

"Like what you do, and then you will do your best."

- Katherine Johnson

"Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you."

- Viola Davis

"We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark."

- Whoopi Goldberg

"Never dull your shine for somebody else."

- Tyra Banks

"You can fool people. You can fool anybody any time of the day, but you can't fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you've got to be straight up with you."

- Whitney Houston

"If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow."

- Beyoncé

"Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward."

- Benjamin Carson

"You have to be able to accept failure to get better."

- LeBron James

"Get up. Stand up. Speak up. Do something."

- Tamara Burke

"Never let someone tell you you're too small or too slow."

- Chris Paul

"It's okay to fail; it's not okay to quit."

- Christopher Paul Gardner

"If your dream is only about you, it's too small."

- Ava DuVernay

"Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end."

- Michelle Obama

"If you can't figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose."

- Bishop T.D. Jakes

"Bottom line: if you show a genuine interest in learning about how others became successful, you can open up a world of opportunities."

- Armstrong Williams

"You can and should set your own limits and clearly articulate them. This takes courage, but it is also liberating and empowering, and often earns you new respect."

- Rosalind Brewer

"I know that in life there will be sickness, devastation, disappointments, heartache - it's a given. What's not a given is the way you choose to get through it all. If you look hard enough, you can always find the bright side."

- Rashida Jones

"The easy thing to do is to keep doing what’s always been done, but challenging the status quo can show you things you didn’t know were possible."

- Alicia Boler Davis

"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."

- Ella Fitzgerald

"Hold on to your dreams of a better life and stay committed to striving to realize it."

- Earl G. Graves, Sr.

"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

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

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it."

- Claudette Colvin

"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

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

- Langston Hughes

"There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up."

- Booker T. Washington

"I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as early as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit."

- Ida B. Wells

"'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

"Don't agonize, organize."

- Florynce Kennedy

"Whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free . . . your true self comes out."

- Tina Turner

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

- Barack Obama

"There comes a time when people get tired of being plunged into the abyss of exploitation and nagging injustice."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The knowledge I have now is not the knowledge I had then."

- Stokely Carmichael

"The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace."

- Chinua Achebe

"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

"Stretch your mind and fly."

- Whitney M. Young Jr

"You've got to learn to leave the table when love's no longer being served."

- Nina Simone

"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

"I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history."

- Morgan Freeman

"There is no vaccine for racism."

- Kamala Harris

"Never be afraid to sit awhile and think."

- Lorraine Hansberry

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."

- Zora Neale Hurston

"When I discover who I am, I'll be free."

- Ralph Ellison

"Everything is habit-forming, so make sure what you do is what you want to be doing."

- Wilt Chamberlain

"Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness."

- Ola Joseph

"Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot."

- Clarence Thomas

"Be as you are and hope that it’s right."

- Dizzy Gillespie

"We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond."

- Gwendolyn Brooks

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."

- Mother Teresa

"The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less."

- Eldridge Cleaver

"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

"Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Success is the sweetest revenge."

- Vanessa Williams

"When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability."

- Alicia Keys

"In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."

- Thurgood Marshall

"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice."

- Carter Woodson

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

- Carol Moseley-Braun

"Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion."

- William Lloyd Garrison

"Our nation is a rainbow - red, yellow, brown, black, and white - and we're all precious in God's sight."

- Jesse Jackson

"Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard."

- Colin Powell

"One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter."

- James Earl Jones

"Greatness can be captured in one word: lifestyle. Life is God's gift to you, style is what you make of it."

- Mae Jemison

"There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past."

- Ernest J. Gaines

"Whoever debases others is debasing himself."

- James Baldwin

"Now no one can fault the conqueror for writing history the way he sees it, and certainly not for digesting human events and discovering their patterns according to his point of view. But we can fault him for not owning up to what his point of view is."

- Toni Morrison

"Are you going to let someone else's view of who you should be, and what you should do, hold you back?"

- Charmaine Wilkerson

"If I don't poke my head out of my shell and show people who I am, all anyone will ever think I am is my shell."

- Shonda Rhimes

"It's okay to be discouraged. It's natural. But in the discouragement, find your courage."

- Tabitha Brown

"Growth requires movement. And often, the only way forward is through an exit door."

- Alicia Keys

"If you're too weak to handle failure and disappointment, then you're too weak to handle success, which will only end up damaging your life and happiness."

- Kevin Hart

"I did infer, however, that submitting to melancholy would undo the labors of those who had come before me, that I had an obligation to resist instead of giving in. I rose unsteadily to my feet, aware of my shackles, but determined to somehow overcome them."

- Jabari Asim

"Question yourself, yes, but don't doubt yourself. There is a difference."

- Charmaine Wilkerson

"Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables as we did in Kansas."

- Langston Hughes

"So my advice to other young writers: Read widely. Study other writers. Be thoughtful, Then go out and do the work of changing the form, finding your own voice, and saying what you need to say. Be fearless. And care."

- Glory Edim

"Art is not mere entertainment or decoration, it has meaning, and we both want and need to fathom that meaning."

- Toni Morrison

"Discovering what you don’t want is just as important as finding out what you do."

- Elaine Welteroth

"My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life."

- Viola Davis

"I started teaching myself to contort my rage into more valuable shapes; it doesn't disappear that way, just works for you instead of against you."

- Nikole Hannah-Jones

"Children don't carry the weight of history, so their capacity for heavy things might be greater. But few adults believe this, so we pass along only what we think they can bear. Children wonder later why we didn't tell them everything so they could avoid our mistakes."

- Daniel Black

"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

"A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity."

- Toni Morrison

"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning."

- Maya Angelou

"Sometimes being a good ally is about opening the door for someone instead of insisting that your voice is the only one that matters."

- Mikki Kendall

"I call something a miracle when an ordinary person achieves something extraordinary. We all have the potential to create miraculous changes."

- Tina Turner

"If you know what you want, ask for it. And be specific—you just might get it."

- Elaine Welteroth

"No woman has to be respectable to be valuable."

- Mikki Kendall

"Don't sell yourself short. You will meet people along the way who will be lining up to place limits on you. You don't need to beat them to the punch."

- Leslie Odom Jr.

"I am what I have become."

- Sidney Poitier

"We should seek out all the doors which still remain ajar, however slight the opening might be."

- Angela Y. Davis

"When you don't know your true value, you see the world through the lens of how you don't measure up."

- Cicely Tyson

"Rising from the ashes of my earlier life, I learned that our thoughts, words, and deeds are unified through spiritual practice. They are made whole within us. And when our thoughts, words, and deeds are aligned with our most positive intentions, magic happens."

- Tina Turner

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

- Gabrielle Union

"The truth is, I’ve never been a big believer in destiny. I worry that it encourages resignation in the down-and-out and complacency among the powerful."

- Barack Obama

"You could convince anyone you belonged somewhere if you acted like you did."

- Brit Bennett

"When you can’t find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example."

- Roxane Gay

"You were never just you, and you owed it to the people you cared about to remember that. Because the people you loved were part of your identity, too. Perhaps the biggest part."

- Charmaine Wilkerson

"It’s my devout conviction that if I’m not enabling and encouraging the underprivileged and the vulnerable, then I haven’t justified their confidence in me, and I haven’t done sufficient justice to their gifts."

- Billy Porter

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

- Brit Bennett

"I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act. It is an act that can be met with hostility, exclusion, and violence. It can also lead to love, understanding, transcendence, and community."

- Janet Mock

"History has shown that one person's willingness to stand up for what is right can be the spark that ignites far-reaching change."

- Kamala Harris

"You can't be a part of the solution if you don't recognize how you are a part of the problem."

- Elaine Welteroth

"We seek harm to none and harmony for all."

- Amanda Gorman

"I don't think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it's only optimism of the will."

- Angela Y. Davis

"My daily challenge to myself is to be part of the solution, to be a joyful warrior in the battle to come."

- Kamala Harris

"By honoring each other’s ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, we become stronger and happier, brightening the cosmic masterpiece of artwork that is our world. Rather than emphasize differences, we should be looking for similarities. Our differences are ultimately superficial, and the best thing to do is celebrate them."

- Tina Turner

"It may be a while before we find our footing again. The losses will reverberate for years to come. We will get shaken and shaken again. The world will remain both beautiful and broken. The uncertainties aren’t going away. But when equilibrium isn’t possible, we are challenged to evolve."

- Michelle Obama

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

- Zora Neale Hurston

"Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered."

- Ta-Nehisi Coates

"To be seen in this life, truly observed without judgment, is what it feels like to be loved."

- Cicely Tyson

"Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be."

- Shonda Rhimes

"Love is a choice we can make every day."

- Shonda Rhimes

"We are creatures of love. God gave us a heart. A heart is designed to love. So our natural ability is to love. And part of loving ourselves and those around us is being willing to forgive and be forgiven."

- Tabitha Brown

"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

"When children are small, our desires seem small, even if we want the sky. Anything we want seems to be only a matter of time and effort away. It’s too early to imagine what’s already holding you back."

- Ashley C. Ford

"We put our kids to fifteen years of quick-cut advertising, passive television watching, and sadistic video games, and we expect to see emerge a new generation of calm, compassionate, and engaged human beings?"

- Sidney Poitier

"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

"With really good literature you’re allowed to take multiple journeys as your perspective shifts over time. It continues to resonate, as you find different ways of entering and engaging with the narrative."

- Glory Edim

"The more I wonder, the more I love."

- Alice Walker

"Change requires intent and effort. It really is that simple."

- Roxane Gay

"It's not till she's outside that she realizes what she was looking for in there. What she's been looking for all these years. What she realizes now she no longer needs. Permission."

- Tochi Onyebuchi

"Whenever you conceptualize social justice struggles, you will always defeat your own purposes if you cannot imagine the people around whom you are struggling as equal partners."

- Angela Y. Davis

"The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself--the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us--that's where it's at."

- Jesse Owens

"Human beings are more alike than different—damn sure more alike than we like to admit."

- Octavia E. Butler

"Living a joyful life, I’ve found, is not about trying to avoid the unavoidable. Joy comes from summoning a strong life force to overcome problems, from the smallest irritation to the biggest disaster."

- Tina Turner

"At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don’t. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought."

- Tina Turner

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."

- Jimi Hendrix

"Sometimes the message of love, inclusion, and equality needs to be direct and clear."

- Billy Porter

"Devote a slice of your energies toward making the world suck less every week."

- Shonda Rhimes

"A problem is a chance for you to do your best."

- Duke Ellington

"All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man."

- Colson Whitehead

"Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars."

- Assata Shakur

"All I know is I've tried my best."

- Tiger Woods

"Just don't give up what you're trying to do. Where there is Love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."

- Ella Fitzgerald

"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

"It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions."

- Aristotle

"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

"In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect."

- Alice Walker

"Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views."

- Mohandas Gandhi

"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

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

- Alex Haley

"We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams."

- Jimmy Carter

"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

"Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable."

- Kenyan Proverb

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none."

- Miles Davis

"I don’t understand why people work so hard at pointing out our differences; we should be celebrating the things we have in common."

- Bernie Mac

"Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of 'wrong' ideas."

- Octavia E. Butler

"Healing, as I see it, is not the absence of pain. Rather it is a gradual reduction in the ache. The lessening of that hurt eventually makes room for fond memories to surface."

- Cicely Tyson

"Resentment corrodes the veins of the person who carries it."

- Cicely Tyson

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

- Billie Holiday

"No one ever told her how to get her heart to abandon a dream once the dreamer stops dreaming."

- Kaia Alderson

"But for a society build on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress."

- N. K. Jemisin

"The advice I would give to someone is to not take anyone's advice."

- Eddie Murphy

"Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living."

- Mary McLeod Bethune

"It is easy to be brave from a safe distance."

- Aesop

"The most marvelous, unbelievable thing about Black people in America is that they exist. Every imaginable monstrosity that evil can conjure has been inflicted on this population, yet they have not been extinguished."

"Black people always found a way in the most miserable circumstances. If we didn't, we'd have been exterminated by the white man long ago."

"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."

"I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made."

"Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light."

"Race is the child of racism, not the father."

"I feel that if we don't take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist who is the perpetrator, then we won't ever succeed in eradicating racism."

"Turning a blind eye to our history has not saved us from its consequences."

"When I discover who I am, I’ll be free."

"Most people run from what they’re afraid of. I run toward it. That doesn’t mean I think I’m bulletproof (I’ve learned the hard way that I’m not) or that I’m unaware of danger. I experience fear as much as the next man. But one of the greatest mistakes people can make is becoming comfortable with their fears."

"To soar toward what's possible, you must leave behind what's comfortable."

"No matter how often you fall from grace, what matters most is how many times you get up."

"I am stronger than I am broken."

"You don't have to become something you're not to be better than you were."

"When the world tells you to shrink, expand."

"In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn."

"Yes, representation matters, but there is more to transformation than looking into a book the way you would look into a mirror."

"The discussion of representation is one that has been repeated over and over again, and the solution has always been that it’s up to us to support, promote, and create the images that we want to see."

"God gives nothing to those who keep their arms crossed."

"Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color."