Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The simplest case, where one is informed that a cat is black because it is black, may be harmless, though irritating and useless; but the actual cases [in statements of evolutionary theory] are always harder to detect than this, and may darken counsel for a long time.
Honest to God, all my life I have had such a fear of spiders. In fact, I use to have a reoccurring dream about one. Very clearly, it was black with a red head. It would sit up in the corner of the bedroom and when it started getting closer, I would wake up in a panic.
Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waves swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.
That's a big trunk," James said, as we jammed in the leathery old case that looked so much like the black heart of some leviathan. "It fits a tuba, three suitcases, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly." "That's just what they used to say in the ads," I said.
There's something different about growing up black and Muslim, especially in New Jersey. It's like when I left the mosque and I left my dad, I felt unprotected, but I also felt a weird sense of pride, like I was involved in this other way of living that was cool to me.
I know this is weird... I am a Black woman and I am not mixed with any Asian blood or Chinese blood at all, but for some reason, as a child, the movie, The Last Emperor, had a serious affect on me. I can't understand why. But there's something that the movie did to me.
My mother and father taught me about black excellence and dynasty. They experienced racism personally, and when something like that happens to you and not around you, you develop a different perception than someone who has never experienced racism a day in their lives.
I feel like I missed my era, because I remember the time when black people uplifted each other and looked for the positives. I feel sorry for the people who live their lives in the negative default setting because they filter out what's good, and that's no way to live.
They were enormously chic. My father was very chic. My mother was a heavy woman and she wore wonderful, bright colors, and pajamas, but when she was in town or in New York City or in Paris, she would wear navy blue or black. But there was a flamboyance to both of them.
The day will come - and it is not far off - when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.
The movie, 'Remember the Titans,' is my favorite movie, staring Denzel Washington. I love the way in this movie the game of football brings those boys together, it unites those boys on that football field. It unites a whole town, black, white, old, young, rich and poor.
I was inspired by Colin Farrell in the fact that he's Irish and has freckles but with black hair. I'm a bunch of different things, Irish Polish, Native American, and French, but I wanted to tap into that Irish side and be freckle-y with black hair, so that's what I did.
Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I'm sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I'm a black man in America.
We're talking about America - a country that's been built on the back of cheap labor. That's addicted to cheap labor. Talk to the Chinese and Irish who built the railroads. Talk to the black people who built the South. So what is the US-Mexico conversation really about?
My mother is black, from Grenada, so my blackness was always there, but It wasn't until I started hanging with the upperclassmen black actors at my high school that I really got my roots in being a black American, which is a distinctly different identity and experience.
... the outcome of the Clarence Thomas hearings and his subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court shows how misguided, narrow notions of racial solidarity that suppress dissent and critique can lead black folks to support individuals who will not protect their rights.
Well, there were definitely elements of my rise in radio that had to do with my being black. But going back as far as Walter Winchell, Army Archerd and Hedda Hopper, legendary wags would grab a radio microphone and talk about what Errol Flynn and other stars were up to.
I find that people in American are often much more purist. If you're into hip-hop, you're totally into hip-hop - you wear the uniform, that's all you listen to. If you're a goth, you're totally a goth - you've got, like, 4,000 piercings, black hair, you really go for it.
Eating plain toast will detonate her. "I'll have some honey." When the bread is done I scrape on a microscopic layer of it and pour a cup of coffee, black. She pretends not to listen or watch as I crunch through my breakfast. I pretend that I don't notice her pretending.
Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it's no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create - in one generation - closing the gap. That's why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: 'cause it's life or death for real.
I guess my favorite way to travel is in a car, especially if you get to go some place cool. The bullet train in Japan is cool; but overall, driving through certain areas, like the desert in the United States, or the Black Forest in Germany, you feel the nature unfolding.
You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There's another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.
I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.
What we are saying is that we need to consolidate the capacity to lend support. Because, one of the problems that's mentioned with regard to the Black Empowerment process in the case of small and medium business, is shortage of credit or difficulties of accessing credit.
During one new moon at perigee, I stood on high ground, watching salt ponds overflow, cover the beach, and meet the ocean. Because the moon was invisible, the water was black as it drowned the sand, and the event felt primal - which in fact it was, because it was nature.
To me, Green Arrow in the past, what people loved about Oliver Queen pre-New 52 was his relationships with other heroes. Like his friendship with Green Lantern, his animosity with Hawkman, his romance with Black Canary - these are all the things that sort of defined him.
I'm an afternoon tea type of girl. I come from a Russian background where we love our teas. So between lunch and dinner after training I come home and I love a nice cup of tea with jam in it, as we drink it there. Black English Breakfast with raspberry jam is my favorite.
We need the best and the brightest thinkers, strategists, coders, surveillance experts, tech geeks, and disruptors to utilize all of the tools we have available to us to build the world that we want to see. A world where black lives matter. A world where all lives matter.
I think that it's hard enough being an adolescent and wanting so much to fit in with your peers, your schoolmates, and to erase any sign of difference, to be part of the group. And being biracial but also being black in a predominately white school marked me as different.
Illegal immigrants are beginning to comprise a black market class of workers in our society, jeopardizing the financial health of companies which play by the rules, while themselves vulnerable to the exploitation by those willing to take advantage of their illegal status.
It's really hard to be a black Republican. I see what they go through. It's a good little trick the entire mainstream media has pulled by describing Republicans as "Racist! Racist! Racist!" and then turning around and laughing at us for not having more blacks in our party.
Here's the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it's put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don't call them a white film. I'm trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.
I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones who paid very dearly for those great fortunes.
I remember when I first saw Whoopi Goldberg doing standup, and she was wearing a sheet on her head, basically pretending to be this little white girl with long luxurious blonde hair. Everyone can relate to that. It's an oral history of black women's lives through laughter.
I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.
If we begin by the conversation that some people shouldn't be encouraged to come to the polls, that does nothing to help us. And just as a practical matter, when we don't encourage voters to come out to the polls, the people who stay home quickest are black and brown folk.
I used to be offended when people would compare me to Erykah Badu. Because I'm black, thick, and have large lips? There's nothing similar about us whatsoever, and I felt very disrespected by the fact that people needed to pigeonhole me. I wasn't even raised on Erykah Badu!
When I was designing, I had in mind Jimi Hendrix, and I could hardly find skinny indie black kids to wear my clothes. I remember one telling me he had to swap his skinny jeans for baggy ones in the subway before going home, so he wouldn't get in trouble in his neighborhood.
Those companies that don't see the black and brown communities are missing, out of their closed eye, talent, which leads to money and growth. When baseball, football and basketball couldn't see the field, they missed talent and growth. The same is true in the tech industry.
For centuries in this country, black people were seen as three-fifths of a person. So when you hear the national anthem or you see an American flag as an African American person who has experienced the effects of that dehumanizing existence, it's not going to mean the same.
The black masses must demand and refuse to accept nothing less than that proportionate percentage of the political spoils such as jobs, elective offices and appointments... They must reject the shameful racial tokenism that characterizes the political life of America today.
There was always resistance and there was always a counter-narrative, but we were told all through the early twentieth century that black people in the South don't want an education, they don't want to vote, they're simple people, they don't want this, they don't want that.
I am not times fool, nor a god hardened by the millennia; I am not the trickster in the black cape nor the sorrowful wanderer. I have a conscience. I know right from wrong I know what I do and yes, I do it. I am the Vampire Lestat. That's your answer do with it as you will.
The 1990s were also when a bunch of the soft-shoe language for race, gender, and class became paramount. Because before that I wasn't thinking about systems or food insecurity or whatever. I was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.
I've been dealing with racism since I was a little kid! My dad's super black, from Puerto Rico. Then my mom's super white - she's Puerto Rican too, but she grew up in Milwaukee. As a Latino in the U.S. I've seen how we are treated differently based on the color of our skin.
It's very lonely being a prominent black intellectual at an institution where you're the only prominent black intellectual. That was the model that was followed in the late 60s when black studies started. You'd get one here and one there and one here, like Johnny Appleseed.
Traveling in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use public facilities that white people used.
I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.
Portland is often trumpeted as being one of America's coolest, hippest cities. I've been to Portland many times, and I'm always like, "Yeah it's cool and hip, but also, where are all the black people? Why is this city so cool and hip, and also keeping the black people away?"