Quotes of Essence
This is my collection of quotes from famous African-americans
If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.
If we lose [our] love and self-respect and respect for each other, this is how we will finally die.
-- Maya Angelou
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everbody.
-Bill Cosby
It's better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.
-- Jackie Joyner-Kersee
God created black people and black people created style.
-George C. Wolfe
"We must become the change we want to see."
-Mahatma Ghandi
"The person who has eaten enough, calls the one who is hungry greedy."
-Gikuyu Proverb
"Tame birds think of freedom, the wild ones fly."
-Unknown
"Its an awful thing to think about, the way love never dies."
The Amen Corner, Act III(1965),James Baldwin
"...I must own, to the shame of my own countrymen, that I was first kidnapped
and betrayed by some of my own complexion; but if there were no buyers, there would be no sellers."
Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evils of Slavery,(1787)
"When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with
the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little
more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song,
and die like a hero going home."
-Chief Aupumut, Mohican. 1725
"Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American."
-Malcolm X (1925-1965), U.S. Muslim leader. "The Ballot or the Bullet," speech, April 3, 1964, Cleveland, Ohio
"When I discover who I am,Ill be free."
-Ralph Ellison
"The nature of a panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks him or backs him into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that aggressor or that attacker out, absolutely, resolutely, wholly, thoroughly, and completely."
-Huey P. Newton
"The white man says there is freedom and justice for all. We have had "freedom and justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this."
-1927 Grand Council of American Indians
"What then did you expect when you unbound the gag
that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises?
Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed
down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?"
-Jean-Paul Sartre
"Someone was hurt before you; wronged before you; hungry before you;
frightened before you; beaten before you; humiliated before you; raped before you; yet someone survived."
-Maya Angelou
"There is always something left to love. And if you aint learned that,
you aint learned nothing."
-Lorraine Hansberry
"When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."
-Chinua Achebe
"Call on God, but row away from the rocks."
-Indian Proverb
"There is no hell like a troubled conscience."
-Unknown
"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they dont have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"When your eyes begin to hurt from staring into the sun.... .close them. Don't worry, that doesn't shut down the Sun."
-IM704
"When the axe came into the forest, the trees said,
the handle is one of us."
-Unknown
"When you kill the ancestor you kill yourself."
-Toni Morrison
"Oppression makes a wise man mad."
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Address Rochester, New York (July 5, 1852),Frederick Douglass
"It is the fool whose own tomatoes are sold to him."
-Akan Proverb
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"We must begin to understand that a revolution entails not only the willingness to lay our lives on the firing line and get killed. In some ways, this is an easy commitment to make. To die for the revolution is a one-shot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day patterns."
-Frances Beal
"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."
-Langston Hughes
"I remember being afraid of what OTHER PEOPLE thought of me: then I realized that it didn't MATTER what THEY thought; it only mattered who I REALLY WAS..."
~Lisa-Nicole Jackson, 1996.
"Trust is the most important thing to have in any relationship. For if there is no trust, there is no respect; if there is no respect, there is no friendship; and if there is no friendship, there can be no love, and how can you be with someone you don't love? Because if you don't trust them, you can't love them."
~Lisa-Nicole Jackson, 1997.
Walt's Friday Inspiration #78-(02/19/99)
Everything we do in life
and every thought we voice
it's love or fear and nothing else
from which we make our choice
Which one rules you?
(c) walt@nichemarket.com
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