Marian Anderson:
“As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold the person down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.” “The minute a person whose word means a great deal to others dares to take the open-hearted and courageous way, many others follow.”
Pearl Bailey:
“What the world really needs is more love and less paper work.”
Ruby Dee:
“You just try to do everything that comes up. Get up an hour earlier, stay up an hour later, make the time. Then you look back and say, ‘Well, that was a neat piece of juggling there — school, marriage, babies, career.’ The enthusiasm took me through the action, not the measuring of it or the reasonableness.”
Mary McLeod Bethune:
“Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.”
Shirley Chisholm:
“I am, was, and always will be a catalyst for change.”
Dorothy Height:
“I want to be remembered as someone who used herself and anything she could touch to work for justice and freedom…. I want to be remembered as one who tried.”
Mae Jemison:
“It is important for scientists to be aware of what our discoveries mean, socially and politically. It’s a noble goal that science should be apolitical, a cultural, and asocial, but it can’t be, because it’s done by people who are all those things.”
Barbara Jordan:
“What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.”
Jackie Joyner-Kersee:
“The glory of sport comes from dedication, determination and desire. Achieving success and personal glory in athletics has less to do with wins and losses than it does with learning how to prepare yourself so that at the end of the day, whether on the track or in the office, you know that there was nothing more you could have done to reach your ultimate goal.”
Audre Lorde:
“I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.”
Toni Morrison:
“If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
Harriet Tubman:
“If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.”
Alice Walker:
“Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”
Faye Wattleton:
“Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can’t take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can’t take care of anything. It should not be seen as a privilege or as a benefit, but a fundamental human right.”
