Toni Morrison Quotes

I said, "If I was a Negro girl-" He placed his fingers across my lips so I tasted his saltiness. "We can't think of changing our skin," he said. "Change the world-that's how we gotta think."

If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood--to hate himself.

I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.

People look at me, and they don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. I always thought I'd be the white person in a black play.

It is hard for a black man to just be himself. We spend so much time in defense of something that is indefensible because there is nothing to defend.

I'm black, I don't feel burdened by it and I don't think it's a huge responsibility. It's part of who I am. It does not define me.

I am black, and there's no getting around that, but being black doesn't define every aspect of my life.

I grew up hearing, 'You're pretty for a black girl,' 'You speak well for a black girl...' I was really bookish. I was reading all of the time. I had big glasses.

I am more than a black guy. I am a person, I'm storyteller, I'm a son, I'm a friend, so I am all those things, so it is frustrating, to a degree, to be limited by other people's perceptions of me, but at the same time, it is true that I am a black guy, and, you know, it's like I'm rooted in but not bound by.

Blackness remains the coat you can't take off.

I'd much rather people knew me as a good tennis player than as an aboriginal who happens to play good tennis. Of course I'm proud of my race, but I don't want to be thinking about it all the time.

I don't know that I constantly think about being a black woman.

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!

Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.

Why would I try to change who I look like, what my race is? No. No no no. You are beautiful because that’s the skin you were born with. Love it. And be proud of it.

Miss America was always white. All the beautiful brown women in America, beautiful sun tans, beautiful shapes, all types of complexions, but she always was white.And Miss World was always white, and Miss Universe was always white.And the angel fruit cake was the white cake and the devil food cake was the chocolate cake.I said, 'Momma, why is everything white?' I always wondered. And the President lived in the White House.

The myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde.

Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.

Everyone knows I'm black. I am who I am. This is the person that Lester Sr. and June Holt raised, and I make no apology for it. At the same time, I'm never going to pull a race card to get what I want. You can't have it both ways.

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

I'm of African descent and my sister looks completely black, but I didn't look black. I was the super-nerdy kid who was also willing to fight.

I wasn't always black... there was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.

I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.

We put stereotypes on ourselves. Everybody does that. But I think it's just a little harder for black kids to just be who they are.

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor. I'm very proud to be black, but I'm just as much black as I am white.