Black Quotations

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people.

Somebody has to wear the black hat and give the audience someone to shake their fists at. They want someone to hate. And if that's what you want to pay me to do, I'm happy to do it!

I had great admiration for the election of President Obama. I believe that the U.S. at that moment showed tremendous capacity to show that it is a great nation, and it surprised the world. It may be very difficult to be able to elect a black president in the U.S. - as it was very difficult to elect a woman president in Brazil.

When I was a kid, I knew the black and white version of 'Jane Eyre,' and I guess I became interested in the idea of romantic love - of unrequited love and the tragedies of that; of what are the important things in life; what should one value over other materials.

General relativity predicts that time ends inside black holes because the gravitational collapse squeezes matter to infinite density.

I had the opportunity of making necropsies on patients dead from malignant fever and of studying the melanaemia, i.e., the formation of black pigment in the blood of patients affected by malaria.

I dug up some old John Buscema 'Conan' comics. Man, when Alfredo Alcala was inking, that was some of the most beautiful black and white comic art ever published. The stories are good, too, though early '70s comics based on Conan is a festival of sexist, racist stereotypes.

'Hollywood maids' are so idiotic. They grin at everything. I told Norman Lear I didn't want to play a maid because of that 'hee-hee/grin-grin' attitude, and he said, 'Who said I wanted that?' He told me he wanted two strong women that are the black and white of the same coin. I said, 'Oh, well - in that case, I'll be right there!'

My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women.

I can't stop watching black and white movies. I live in a world of Warner Brothers movies and all of that stuff from an older era, and I love them. I still love them. When I look at them, I sometimes think I was born in the wrong time.

I'm a little bit more unusual so I consider myself as the black sheep.

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

I do not make any apologies for my manner or personality. I come from a long line of very strong, black African-American women who neither bend nor bow. I haven't had very good modeling in submission.

I have my great grandmother's recipe for black beans, all the way from Cuba, and I know how to make those. I'm actually pretty good at it now. But my first time, the beans actually exploded in the pot, so I had black beans just dripping from the ceiling - which is actually a dream come true for most Cubans. It was a nightmare to clean.

The Republican Party just isn't held in high repute in the black community. Under Bill Brock we were reaching out to broaden the base of the party. We have to go back to that.

No time to marry, no time to settle down; I'm a young woman, and I ain't done runnin' around.

Being glamorous is about strength and confidence. It's black and white - dramatic. You have to be strong.

I don't see the world completely in black and white. Sometimes I do.

Reggae music don't really focus on one thing, you know. If reggae music is speaking about the struggle of people, and the suffering, it don't mean black people. It mean people in general.

I still think the best metal bands have a blues feel. The first Black Sabbath album is kind of a bludgeoning of blues. Deep Purple also started out as a blues band.

I always get the 'goth girl' thing because I wear black. But I don't worship death.

Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.

I want to see as many black professionals as possible.

There's so much grey to every story - nothing is so black and white.

Maybe black and white is the best medium for landscapes, I don't know.

I think it's because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn't necessarily reach the heart.

I really can't break away from wearing black and leather!

You are a black goddess when you come out the salon.

Newman's second law: Just when things look darkest, they go black.

I am not a black artist, I am an artist.

If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.

Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.

In the beginning it was all black and white.

We're so quick to go to make things black and white, and to put things in their box. But everything is this mixture - and that's what this world is - is this blend of different things.

When I introduced a black soldier, Lt. Flap, in 1971, the Stars and Stripes banned the strip. They were having racial problems and thought it would increase the tensions.

We could play them through the week, and then the weekend we could play the black joints. I learned to be very versatile and learned to love it. So it stays with me even up to now.

Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.

I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

I find, in being black, a thing of beauty: a joy; a strength; a secret cup of gladness.

There are ogres and black beasts out there; you have to be constantly on guard.

It doesn't matter if it's black-and-white. If a movie has a story that is filled with emotion, you can have as much pleasure, and it's very good for cinema.

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

I wear black skinny-fit jeans - I can't get away from them. It's funny because I wore baggy jeans for ages, then one day my friend convinced me to try on a skinny pair and I thought they were great.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

I like Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Common. But I like the underground stuff like Young Jeezy, Black Rob and Shine. I also love heavy metal like Slipknot and Pantera, It's very intense stuff.

I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos.

The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time.

There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.

We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didnt walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.

A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.

I like doing business in a black city.

It is hard to think of practical applications of the black hole. Because practical applications are so remote, many people assume we should not be interested. But this quest to understand the world is what defines us as human beings.

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

It is my hope that as we commemorate Black History Month in the future, we will continue to celebrate the many achievements and rich culture of African-Americans.

Black women, whose experience is unique, are seldom recognized as a particular social-cultural entity and are seldom thought to be important enough for serious scholarly consideration.

I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.

A deep, black grief gripped Robert Kennedy in the months following his brother's assassination. He lost weight, fell into melancholy silences, wore his brother's clothes, smoked the cigars his brother had liked, and imitated his mannerisms.

Now we have black and white elected officials working together. Today, we have gone beyond just passing laws. Now we have to create a sense that we are one community, one family. Really, we are the American family.

Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.

I'm not that interested in fashion... When someone says that lime-green is the new black for this season, you just want to tell them to get a life.

I always wear my black watch on my left wrist so I know I'm on stage on time.

I don't like to see projects that are all black or all white. It's how life is. I do like to make sure that I do a nice black family film; that's like keeping my home base. I do other things, but I like to always come back to a positive family film, because of all the negative influences today.

No matter what you do, black lace tends to look a little Spanish.

I'm here because I stand on many, many shoulders, and that's true of every black person I know who has achieved.

The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.

My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a decade; I dug ditches and loaded trucks with black men who taught me more than any book ever could; and I graduated from Ole Miss. Anyone who survived that is a de facto expert on the South.

As a kid, I fell in love with the 'Creature from the Black Lagoon.' I don't know why. I liked the werewolf, Gamera, The Hulk, but I loved the Creature.

With theatre, we all agree to suspend our disbelief about so many things, but not about race. It's totally OK to have one actor playing five roles - people are willing to believe that. But they won't believe it if there's a black or an Asian kid who has white parents. What does that say about us?

Perhaps we should worry less about judging people for being Mormon or Baptist or Muslim or gay or straight or black or white or Latino or by their religious or political brands and worry more about electing thoughtful, serious and ethical politicians on both sides of the political isle who are willing to work together for progress.

One of the things about being a minority actor is that you don't have that opportunity as some of your counterparts to keep that flow, to constantly be going from one thing to the other, so when you see really great performances out there by some black folks, you know it's coming from somewhere deep, because they just don't work as much.

Most kids are smarter than most grown-ups. Kids see the world in black and white... They look through all the garbage and see a world run by fools and dullards and lazy people. And there's nothing they can do about it because they have no power.

You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we're presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated - not nearly as black and white as we're led to believe.

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.

If Lady Gaga is like an orange Bugatti Veyron, then I am like a black 1970 Chevelle.

I'll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a Left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented!

Six is the hardest number for me to experience, the smallest. It's the absence of something - it's cold, dark, almost like a black hole. If someone tells me they are depressed, I might imagine myself in the hole of a six to help me empathise.

As a lifelong Oregonian, I prefer our forests green, not black.

Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood.

If you were black, you experienced prejudice. It wasn't a real horrible thing for us; we went through it. We noticed it mostly in the South and in Las Vegas, where we couldn't stay in the hotels where we entertained. But that began to change.

The savage repression of blacks, which can be estimated by reading the obituary columns of the nation's dailies, Fred Hampton, etc., has not failed to register on the black inmates.

Even if its a white crowd, I tell my jokes for the four black people in the room, not the 100 whites.

Remember those black-and-white films with Frank Sinatra? Those guys looked like men and they were only 27! Listen to Otis Redding singing 'Try A Little Tenderness'. That was a man who understood what a man has to know in the world. Show me a real man now! Where are they?

Funny is not a color. Being black is only good from the time you get from the curtain to the microphone.

I wear a lot of black, but not in the goth way, I just really love black. I'll never be in pink or purples.

It's about you. If you win, it's you; if you lose, it's you. Black and white. Nowhere to hide.

None of us is responsible for the complexion of his skin. This fact of nature offers no clue to the character or quality of the person underneath.

That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor.

I love Obama because he is proof all black people don't look alike. Nobody every told me, 'Good morning, Mr. President.' We don't all look alike.

Black music has increased my enjoyment of what I do. It has increased my range, my ability to reach into myself and accept myself.

Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be, and I like exploring this nuanced terrain.

When I got to Grinnell College, I was part of the black turtleneck sweater and Camel cigarette crowd of poets and writers.

My most recent purchase was a black lace corset.

The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, that the impressions it receives the oftenest, and retains the longest, are black ones.

My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.

I have a massive phobia for schedules and calendars. I need people to tell me where I need to be. I can't bear to see it in black and white. I think it's a fear of being pinned down.

We want to live in the black and white, but we don't. The world is gray. And, I'm always fascinated by people who are clearly, 'This is black and this is white, and that's the way life is.' Life always has something to say about that.

How did we suddenly become entranced with gangster culture? I saw it this morning on campus. When did the black community say we should all look like criminals?