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Quotes about race

99 quotes from 54 people

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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
Toni Morrison1931–2019The Guardian (29 January 1992)
- America
The blood, sweat, tears, and suffering of Black people are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United States of America. We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down.
Huey P. Newton1942–1989“In Defense of Self-defense” I (June 20, 1967)
- America
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
Hitler didn’t snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.
Jesse Owens1913–1980About Franklin D. Roosevelt, as quoted in Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics (2007), by Jeremy Schaap, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 211
- Presidency
Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals.
Ron Paulborn 1935Government and Racism (16 April 2007).
Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‘Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.’
Colin Powell1937–2021
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
Ayn Rand1905–1982The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.
Ayn Rand1905–1982The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises?
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)” preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948)
- Freedom
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Merchant of Venice (c. 1597), Act III, Scene I, spoken by ShylockIn context
- Justice
People sometimes ask if I have tried to convince black ‘leaders’ to take a different view on racial issues. Of course not. I wouldn’t spend my time trying to persuade the mafia to give up crime. Why should I spend time trying to convince race hustlers to give up victimhood? It’s their bread and butter.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930
If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930Creators Syndicate November 28, 1998.
- Politics
Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930“Out of Context”, Jewish World Review, 2 June 2009.
I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
Clarence Thomasborn 1948
There can be no doubt that racial paternalism and its unintended consequences can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination.
Clarence Thomasborn 1948Adarand Constructors v. Peña (1995)