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Quotes about race

99 quotes from 54 people

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White Americans desire to be free of a past they do not want to remember, while Black Americans remain bound to a past they can never forget.
Nikole Hannah-Jonesborn 1976The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (2021)
- History
Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Speech at Chicago, Illinois (10 July 1858)
- America
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968“I Have a Dream”, March on Washington (28 August 1963)
- Hope
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968“I Have a Dream”, March on Washington (28 August 1963)
- Freedom
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968“Beyond Vietnam”, Riverside Church, New York (4 April 1967)
- Money
- War & Peace
I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Nelson Mandela1918–2013Statement from the dock at the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria (20 April 1964)
- Courage
- Freedom
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?
Sojourner Truth1797–1883Speech at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio (29 May 1851), in the version Frances Dana Gage published in 1863; the report printed at the time, in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, has no “ain’t I a woman?”
- Women
There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.
Barack Obamaborn 1961Keynote address, Democratic National Convention, Boston (27 July 2004)
- America
- Politics
Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973We Shall Overcome (1965)
- Justice
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
Robert F. Kennedy1925–1968Speech on the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Indianapolis (4 April 1968)
- America
- Love
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. Washington1856–1915The Atlanta Exposition Address (1895)
We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being, in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.
Malcolm X1925–1965Speech at the founding rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, New York (28 June 1964)
- Freedom
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: “Of the Training of Black Men”In context
- Reading
The divide of race has been America’s constant curse.
Bill Clintonborn 1946Bill Clinton’s Second Inaugural Address (1997)
- America
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Heart of Darkness (1899), Part IIn context
- Power