Black History quotes: Malcolm Gladwell

"Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good." 

–– Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963), British-born Canadian author and journalist

From Outliers: The Story of Success

Black History quotes: Rosa Parks

"To bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try." 

–– Rosa Parks (1913-2005), American civil rights activist

Black History quotes: Muhammad Ali

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." 

–– Muhammad Ali (1942-2016), American professional boxer, activist, and entertainer

Black History quotes: Angela Davis

"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time."

–– Angela Davis (b. 1944), American author, activist, and academic 

Black History quotes: 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. (1929-1968), American Baptist minister and civil rights activist  

From A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

Black History quotes: bell hooks

"What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe."

–– bell hooks, pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins (1952-2021), American writer, academic, & activist 

Black History quotes: Romare Bearden

"I believe that art is an expression of what people feel and want. In order for a painting to be "good" two things are necessary: that there be a communion of belief and desire between artist and spectator; that the artist be able to see and say something that enriches the fund of communicable feeling and the medium for expressing it."

–– Romare Bearden (1911-1988), American artist 

Black History quotes: Joyce J. Scott

"It's important to me to use art in a manner that incites people to look and then carry something home – even if it's subliminal – that might make a change in them." 

–– Joyce J. Scott (b. 1948), American visual and performance artist

Black History quotes: George Washington Carver

"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."

–– George Washington Carver (1864-1943), American agricultural scientist and inventor 

Black History quotes: Betye Saar

"I am intrigued with combining the remnant of memories, fragments of relics and ordinary objects, with the components of technology. It's a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously." 

–– Betye Saar (b. 1926), American assemblage artist

Black History quotes: Thelonius Monk

"Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by...What you don't play can be more important than what you do."

–– Thelonious Monk (1917-1982), American jazz pianist and composer 

Black History quotes: Alice Walker

"Some periods of growth are so confusing that we don't even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of out life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed."

–– Alice Walker (b. 1944), American writer and activist 

From Living by the Word

Black History quotes: Booker T. Washington

"I have learned that 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 Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915), American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several U.S. presidents 

From Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Black History quotes: Dionne Brand

"Fashions are not fashions at all but refashioning; language is not communication but reinvention. They are never in place but on display." 

–– Dionne Brand, (b. 1953), Trinidad and Tobago-born Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist

From A Map to the Door of No Return

Black History quotes: Arthur Ashe

"From what we get, we can make a living. What we give; however, makes a life." 

–– Arthur Ashe (1943-1993), American professional tennis player 

Black History quotes: Maya Angelou

"I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt." 

–– Maya Angelou (1928-2014), American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist 

Black History quotes: Louis Armstrong

"If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don't practice for three days, the public knows it."

 

–– Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), American trumpeter and vocalist

Black History quotes: Lilla Watson

 "If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." 

–– Lilla Watson (b. 1940), a Murri Gangulu (Indigenous Australian) visual artist, activist, and academic

via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 153.

Black History quotes: Ralph Ellison

"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 (1913-1994), American novelist, literary critic, and scholar 

Black History quotes: Ella Fitzgerald

"I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns." 

–– Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996), American Jazz singer

Black History quotes: James Baldwin

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." 

–– James Baldwin (1924-1987), American writer and activist

Black History quotes: Toni Morrison

"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 (1931-2019), American novelist

Black History quotes: Miles Davis

"Don't play what's there; play what's not there." 

–– Miles Davis (1926-1991), American musician, bandleader, and composer 

Black History quotes: Faith Ringgold

"I don't think you can create art out of anger; it has to come out of some form of understanding. You have to feel good about who you are and that you could do something to change things." 

–– Faith Ringgold (b. 1930), American painter, textile artist, and performance artist

Black History quotes: Thelonius Monk

"I made the wrong mistakes."

–– Thelonious Monk (1917-1982), American jazz pianist and composer

Black History quotes: Angela Davis

"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change, I am changing the things I cannot accept." 

–– Angela Davis (b. 1944), American author, activist, and academic

Black History quotes: Thompson Egbo-Egbo

"People get stuck on the idea of having resources, but it's more important to be resourceful. Just because you don't have resources – like instruments – doesn't mean nothing can be done." 

– Thompson Egbo-Egbo, Nigerian-born, Toronto-raised musician 

Source: The Globe & Mail, Saturday November 23, 2013, p. M5.

Black History quotes: Nina Simone

 "An artist's duty is to reflect the times." 

–– Nina Simone (1933-2003), American singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist