120 Inspiring Black Historical past Month Quotes
Rejoice Black Historical past Month throughout February 2023 with these vital quotes.
February is Black History Month and we have rounded up 120 inspiring Black Historical past Month quotes from civil rights icons together with Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois. These highly effective public figures have left a mark on our nation with their insightful phrases, historic speeches and extra.
The month honors African American folks’s wealthy vary of experiences, struggles and achievements all through historical past and into the trendy day.
Annually, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)—the group that based Black Historical past Month—supplies a brand new theme for the month. Final yr’s theme was “Black Well being and Wellness” and the theme for February 2023 is “Black Resistance.”
Because the ASALH website says, “African Individuals have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all types, particularly the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores. These efforts have been to advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a simply democratic society in america and past america political jurisdiction.”
In honor of Black Historical past Month, we’ve rounded up 120 inspiring quotes from civil rights icons in addition to phrases of knowledge from inspiring trendy figures together with Viola Davis, Janelle Monáe, and Shonda Rhimes. These public figures have left a mark on our nation with their insightful phrases, historic speeches, highly effective writing and performances, and extra.
To have a good time Black Historical past Month, listed here are 120 quotes to recollect.
120 Black Historical past Month Quotes
1. “By no means be restricted by different folks’s restricted imaginations.”
—Dr. Mae Jemison, first African-American feminine astronaut
2. “I refuse to just accept the view that mankind is so tragically sure to the starless midnight of racism and battle that the brilliant dawn of peace and brotherhood can by no means develop into a actuality…. I imagine that unarmed fact and unconditional love may have the ultimate phrase.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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3. “The price of liberty is lower than the value of repression.”
—W.E.B. Du Bois
4. “In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the best tribute.”
—Thurgood Marshall, first African American U.S. Supreme Court docket member
5. “Hate is simply too nice a burden to bear. It injures the hater greater than it injures the hated.”
—Coretta Scott King
6. “No matter we imagine about ourselves and our potential comes true for us.”
—Susan L. Taylor, journalist
7. “Defining myself, versus being outlined by others, is among the most troublesome challenges I face.”
—Carol Moseley-Braun, politician and lawyer
8. “Someday our descendants will assume it unbelievable that we paid a lot consideration to issues like the quantity of melanin in our pores and skin or the form of our eyes or our gender as a substitute of the distinctive identities of every of us as advanced human beings.”
—Franklin Thomas, activist, philanthropist, and former president of the Ford Basis
9. “My humanity is sure up in yours, for we are able to solely be human collectively.”
—Desmond Tutu
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10. “Maintain quick to goals, for if goals die, life is a damaged winged bird that can’t fly.”
—Langston Hughes
11. “If there is no such thing as a battle, there is no such thing as a progress.”
—Frederick Douglass
12. “The time is all the time proper to do what is true.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
13. “Have a imaginative and prescient. Be demanding.”
—Colin Powell
14. “Freedom isn’t given; it’s received.”
—A. Philip Randolph, civil rights activist
15. “Success is to be measured not a lot by the place that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome whereas making an attempt to succeed.”
—Booker T. Washington
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16. “All of us have goals. With the intention to make goals come into actuality, it takes an terrible lot of willpower, dedication, self-discipline and energy.”
—Jesse Owens, world record-setting Olympic athlete
17. “I’ve discovered over time that when one’s thoughts is made up, this diminishes worry.” —Rosa Parks
18. “Simply do not hand over what you are making an attempt to do. The place there may be love and inspiration, I do not assume you possibly can go mistaken.” —Ella Fitzgerald
19. “If we settle for and acquiesce within the face of discrimination, we settle for the duty ourselves and permit these accountable to salve their conscience by believing that they’ve our acceptance and concurrence. We should always, due to this fact, protest overtly the whole lot… that smacks of discrimination or slander.” —Mary McLeod Bethune
20. “Wherever there’s a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, no matter could be the intercourse or complexion.” —William Lloyd Garrison
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21. “We’ve discovered to fly the air like birds and swim the ocean like fish, however we now have not discovered the straightforward artwork of residing collectively as brothers. Our abundance has introduced us neither peace of thoughts nor serenity of spirit.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
22. “He who is just not brave sufficient to take dangers will accomplish nothing in life.” —Muhammad Ali
23. “For to be free is just not merely to forged off one’s chains, however to reside in a method that respects and enhances the liberty of others.” —Nelson Mandela
24. “The necessity for change bulldozed a street down the middle of my thoughts.” —Maya Angelou
25. “Reality is highly effective and it prevails.” —Sojourner Reality
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26. “I can settle for failure. Everybody fails at one thing. However I can not settle for not making an attempt.” —Michael Jordan
27. “Change is not going to come if we await another individual or another time. We’re those we have been ready for. We’re the change that we search.” —Barack Obama
28. “Maintain on to your goals of a greater life and keep dedicated to striving to understand it.” —Earl G. Graves, Sr.
29. “Gained’t it’s fantastic when black historical past and Native American historical past and Jewish historical past and all of U.S. historical past is taught from one e book. Simply U.S. historical past.” —Maya Angelou
30. “I don’t need a Black Historical past Month. Black historical past is American historical past.” —Morgan Freeman
31. “It’s vital for us to additionally perceive that the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ merely refers back to the notion that there’s a particular vulnerability for African Individuals that must be addressed. It’s not meant to recommend that different lives don’t matter. It’s to recommend that people aren’t experiencing this specific vulnerability.” —Barack Obama
32. ”I swear to the Lord I nonetheless can’t see why democracy means everyone however me.” —Langston Hughes
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33. “Virtually all the time, the artistic devoted minority has made the world higher.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
34. “I felt that one had higher die combating towards injustice than to die like a canine or rat in a lure. I had already decided to promote my life as early as potential if attacked. I felt if I may take one lyncher with me, this is able to even up the rating a bit of bit.” —Ida B. Wells
35. “I’m not fairly positive what freedom is, however I do know rattling effectively what it ain’t. How have we gotten so foolish, I’m wondering.” —Assata Shakur
36. “I knew then and I do know now, relating to justice, there is no such thing as a straightforward approach to get it.” —Claudette Colvin
37. “Throughout Black Historical past Month, I’m reminded but once more of the ways in which the battle for civil rights is interwoven with the battle for staff’ rights.” —Tom Perez
38. “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I’m the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.” —Maya Angelou
39. “Variety is just not about how we differ. Variety is about embracing each other’s uniqueness.” —Ola Joseph
40. “Character is energy.” —Booker T. Washington
41. “One of many classes that I grew up with was to all the time keep true to your self and by no means let what any individual else says distract you out of your targets. And so once I hear about unfavorable and false assaults, I actually don’t make investments any vitality in them, as a result of I do know who I’m.” —Michelle Obama
42. “In case you decide folks, you don’t have any time to like them.” —Mother Teresa
43. “You are to not be so blind with patriotism you could’t face actuality. Fallacious is mistaken, irrespective of who does it or says it.” —Malcolm X
44. “The soul that’s inside me no man can degrade.” —Frederick Douglass
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45. I’m America. I’m the half you will not acknowledge. However get used to me. Black, assured, cocky; my identify, not yours; my faith, not yours; my targets, my very own; get used to me.” —Muhammad Ali
46. “Have a imaginative and prescient of excellence, a dream of success, and work like hell.” —Dr. Samuel DuBois Prepare dinner
47. “Racism is not born, of us, it is taught. I’ve a two-year-old son. what he hates? Naps! Finish of listing.” —Dennis Leary
48. “Right now we all know with certainty that segregation is lifeless. The one query remaining is how expensive would be the funeral.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
49. “‘We, the folks.’ It’s a very eloquent starting. However when that doc was accomplished on the seventeenth of September in 1787 I used to be not included in that “We, the folks.” I felt one way or the other for a few years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, simply left me out by mistake. However by the method of modification, interpretation and court docket choice I’ve lastly been included in ‘We, the folks.’” —Barbara Jordan
50. “I had no concept that historical past was being made. I used to be simply uninterested in giving up.” —Rosa Parks
51. “Racism is man’s gravest risk to man – the utmost of hatred for at least cause.” —Abraham Joshua Heschel
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52. “The vast majority of the Negroes who took half within the year-long boycott of Montgomery’s buses had been poor and untutored; however they understood the essence of the Montgomery motion; one aged lady summed it up for the remainder. When requested after a number of weeks of strolling whether or not she was drained, she answered: ‘My toes is drained, however my soul is at relaxation.’” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
53. “If in case you have no confidence in self, you’re twice defeated within the race of life.” —Marcus Garvey
54. “There comes a time when folks get uninterested in being plunged into the abyss of exploitation and nagging injustice.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
55. “If the one time you consider me as a scientist is throughout Black Historical past Month, then I have to not be doing my job as a scientist.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson
56. “Each time you state what you need or imagine, you’re the primary to listen to it. It’s a message to each you and others about what you assume is feasible. Don’t put a ceiling on your self.” —Oprah Winfrey
57. “After we’re speaking about range, it’s not a field to examine. It’s a actuality that needs to be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.” —Ava DuVernay
58. “I’m fortunate that no matter worry I’ve inside me, my want to win is all the time stronger.” —Serena Williams
59. “As black ladies, we’re all the time given these seemingly devastating experiences — experiences that might completely break us. However what the caterpillar calls the tip of the world, the grasp calls the butterfly. What we do as black ladies is take the worst conditions and create from that time.” —Viola Davis
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60. “Goals are beautiful however they’re simply goals. Fleeting, ephemeral, fairly. However goals don’t come true simply since you dream them. It’s laborious work that makes issues occur. It’s laborious work that creates change.” —Shonda Rhimes
61. “Life is just not a spectator sport. In case you’re going to spend your entire life within the grandstand simply watching what goes on, for my part, you’re losing your life.” —Jackie Robinson
62. “In the event that they don’t provide you with a seat on the desk, deliver a folding chair.” —Shirley Chisholm
63. “I’m hungry for data. The entire thing is to be taught daily, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about. You take a look at somebody like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I believe that’s from being brilliant on a regular basis, and making an attempt to be brighter.” —Jay-Z
64. “Inconceivable is only a huge phrase thrown round by small males who discover it simpler to reside on this planet they’ve been given than to discover the ability they’ve to vary it. Inconceivable is just not a reality. It’s an opinion. Inconceivable is just not a declaration. It’s a dare. Inconceivable is potential. Inconceivable is momentary. Inconceivable is nothing.” —Muhammad Ali
65. “Do one of the best you possibly can till you recognize higher. Then when you recognize higher, do higher.” —Maya Angelou
66. “All of us require and wish respect, man or lady, black or white. It’s our fundamental human proper.” —Aretha Franklin
67. “The factor about black historical past is that the reality is a lot extra advanced than something you can make up.” —Henry Louis Gates
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68. “Black Historical past Month have to be greater than only a month of remembrance; it needs to be a tribute to our historical past and reminder of the work that lies within the months and years forward.” —Marty Meehan
69. “Black historical past is not a separate historical past. That is all of our historical past, that is American historical past, and we have to perceive that. It has such an affect on children and their values and the way they view black folks.” —Karyn Parsons
70. “Do not agonize, arrange.” —Florynce Kennedy
71. “No matter is bringing you down, do away with it. Since you’ll discover that while you’re free . . . your true self comes out.” —Tina Turner
72. “If there’s a e book that you simply wish to learn, but it surely hasn’t been written but, you have to be the one to jot down it.” —Toni Morrison
73. “There are nonetheless many causes price sacrificing for, a lot historical past but to be made.” —Michelle Obama
74. “The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a spot to face and I shall transfer the earth.’ However such a spot doesn’t exist. All of us have to face on the earth itself and go along with her at her tempo.” —Chinua Achebe
75. “In case you don’t believe, you’ll all the time discover a method to not win.” —Carl Lewis
76. “Stretch your thoughts and fly.” —Whitney M. Younger Jr
77. “Don’t let something cease you. There will probably be instances while you’ll be disillusioned, however you possibly can’t cease.” —Sadie T. M. Alexander
78. “Life has two guidelines: #1, by no means give up! Quantity 2, all the time bear in mind rule primary.” —Duke Ellington
79. “Be as you’re and hope that it’s proper.” —Dizzy Gillespie
80. “A person with out data of himself and his heritage is sort of a tree with out roots.” —Dick Gregory
81. “If you recognize whence you got here, there may be actually no restrict to the place you possibly can go.” —James Baldwin
82. “We’ve an exquisite historical past behind us…and it’s going to encourage us to larger achievements.” —Carter G. Woodson
83. “After I take a look at the long run, it’s so brilliant it burns my eyes.” —Oprah Winfrey
84. “The commonest method folks hand over their energy is by pondering they haven’t any.” —Alice Walker
85. “You’re your neatest thing.” —Toni Morrison
86. “I’m a feminist, and what meaning to me is far the identical because the that means of the truth that I’m Black; it signifies that I have to undertake to like myself and to respect myself as if my very life relies upon upon self-love and self-respect.” —June Jordan
87. “I must see my very own magnificence and to proceed to be reminded that I’m sufficient, that I’m worthy of affection with out effort, that I’m lovely, that the feel of my hair and that the form of my curves, the dimensions of my lips, the colour of my pores and skin, and the emotions that I’ve are all worthy and okay.” —Tracee Ellis Ross
88. “You have to be taught to depart the desk when love’s not being served.” —Nina Simone
89. “Even when it makes others uncomfortable, I’ll love who I’m.” —Janelle Monáe
90. “You’re the place you’re at this time since you stand on any individual’s shoulders. And wherever you’re heading, you can’t get there by your self. In case you stand on the shoulders of others, you have got a reciprocal duty to reside your life in order that others could stand in your shoulders. It’s the quid professional quo of life. We exist briefly by what we take, however we reside eternally by what we give.” —Vernon Jordan
91. “If the whole lot was excellent, you’d by no means be taught and you’d by no means develop.” —Beyonce Knowles
92. “Freedom is just not one thing that one folks can bestow on one other as a present. Thy declare it as their very own and none can hold it from them.” —Kwame Nkrumah
93. “I needed to make my very own residing and my very own alternative. However I made it! Do not sit down and await the alternatives to return. Stand up and make them.” —Madam C.J. Walker
94. “The way in which to proper wrongs is to show the sunshine of fact upon them.” —Ida B. Wells
95. “I had reasoned this out in my thoughts; there was one in every of two issues I had a proper to, liberty, or loss of life; if I couldn’t have one, I’d have the opposite; for no man ought to take me alive; I ought to struggle for my liberty so long as my power lasted, and when the time got here for me to go, the Lord would allow them to take me.” —Harriet Tubman
96. “Make a distinction about one thing apart from yourselves.” —Toni Morrison
97. “True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It’s not the urge to surpass all others at no matter value, however the urge to serve others at no matter value.” —Arthur Ashe
98. “God’s time [Emancipation]is all the time close to. He set the North Star within the heavens; He gave me the power in my limbs; He meant I needs to be free.” —Harriet Tubman
99. “One of the best ways to make goals come true is to get up.” —Mae C. Jemison
100. “Injustice anyplace is a risk to justice in all places.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
101. “The battles that depend aren’t those for gold medals. The struggles inside your self—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that is the place it is at.” —Jesse Owens
102. “By no means underestimate the ability of goals and the affect of the human spirit. We’re all the identical on this notion: The potential for greatness lives inside every of us.” —Wilma Rudolph
103. “For Africa to me… is greater than a glamorous reality. It’s a historic fact. No man can know the place he’s going until he is aware of precisely the place he has been and precisely how he arrived at his current place.” —Maya Angelou
104. “Every time a person stands up for an excellent, or acts to enhance the lot of others, or strikes out towards injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope… and crossing one another from one million totally different facilities of vitality and daring these ripples construct a present that may sweep down the mightiest partitions of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy
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105. “In all issues which might be purely social we could be as separate because the fingers, but one because the hand in all issues important to mutual progress.” —Booker T. Washington
106. “A superb head and a superb coronary heart are all the time a formidable mixture.” —Nelson Mandela
107. “One of many hardest issues in life is having phrases in your coronary heart you could’t utter.” —James Earl Jones
108. “There’s nothing like returning to a spot that continues to be unchanged to seek out the methods through which you your self have altered.” —Nelson Mandela
109. “Human salvation lies within the palms of the creatively maladjusted.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
110. “The value of hating different human beings is loving oneself much less.” —Eldridge Cleaver
111. “There isn’t a vaccine for racism.” —Kamala Harris
112. “Will we care to match the truth of America to its beliefs?” —Barack Obama
113. “We’ll all, in some unspecified time in the future, encounter hurdles to gaining entry and entry, shifting up and conquering self-doubt; however on the opposite facet is the capability to personal alternative and inform our personal story.” —Stacey Abrams
114. “Pleasant reminder that you do not have to say the ‘n phrase’ to be racist. That is not the only real requirement. Asking folks to show racism is one other device the oppressor makes use of to marginalize and discredit us.” —Lizzo
115. “The very critical perform of racism is distraction. It retains you from doing all your work. It retains you explaining, again and again, your cause for being.” —Toni Morrison
116. “The fantastic thing about anti-racism is that you simply don’t must fake to be freed from racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the dedication to struggle racism wherever you discover it, together with in your self. And it’s the one method ahead.” —Ijoema Oluo
117. “Ours is just not the battle of at some point, one week, or one yr. Ours is just not the battle of 1 judicial appointment or presidential time period. Ours is the battle of a lifetime, or possibly even many lifetimes, and every one in every of us in each era should do our half.” —John Lewis
118. “Activism is my hire for residing on the planet.” —Alice Walker
119. “In a racist society, it isn’t sufficient to be non-racist. We have to be anti-racist.” —Angela Davis
120. ”We should always remember that Black Historical past is American Historical past. The achievements of African Individuals have contributed to our nation’s greatness.” —Yvette Clarke
Subsequent, listed here are some actions to get your children involved in Black History Month.