Lee Daniels Quotes

Malala Yousafzai is all of our daughter, like Iqbal Masih who was all of our son.

I think the Sixties in some ways is a barrier to young people today. They think of it, you know, what we're doing is not that. But it's partly the myth of the Sixties. It always felt embattled and small. It always, almost always, was a small group of people relative to the opposition around.

As a young black boy, it made me proud to see black leaders that did something amazing and made the world change.

We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs … black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history.

Early on, I wrote a letter to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was 17. I felt called, moved.

Muhammad Ali is my hero. Yes, he was the best boxer in the world, but he also put himself on the line. He talked when black Americans had to be quiet.

At 16, I went to Smith College in Massachusetts and that was right after the peak of the civil-rights movement and all the rest. It was an era when students were making demands and many black students were closer to the teachings of Malcolm X, or what they thought were his teachings.

The youth should come together to challenge the status quo. They must not give up.

Part of the approach envisaged in bringing about Black Consciousness has to be directed to the past, to seek to rewrite the history of the black man and to produce in it the heroes who form the core of the African background

It's good for young people to be angry about something.

Be as proud of your race today as our as our fathers were in days of yore. We have beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.

When they [young people] believe they are the difference! That their voice matters and to use the incredible power each one of them has. I work with an amazing young man, Jaylen Arnold, who started a foundation and a movement to educate people about tolerance and to stop bullying when he was eight years old. He never ceases to inspire me.

My mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that's why she was a Black Panther.

Politicians, they give the visible aspect of the change, but the change, the root, the anchor are in young people.

For me, seeing our history told in this light, the ones who did rebel, the ones who did revolt, the revolutionaries, excited me. Seeing this story of the Underground Railroad ... and that is such a proud part of our history that not a lot of us know about, where these brave men and women, they were heroes, really helped tear down the system of slavery just by running.

For me, the bold jazz of John Coltrane and Miles Davis reflected the bold attitude in African-Americans finding their political identity and voice.

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.

The youth are the catalysts for real change.

In the U.S., African- Americans, no matter what we do - when we sit in, when we freedom ride, when we kneel in, whatever it is, the initial response from the public tends to be overwhelmingly negative, because basically we're kind of raining on folks' parades. As time goes on, the Muhammad Ali's and all the people that raised those issues, they then become heroes later when people reflect on the courage they showed and the issues that they raised. And Donald Trump is in danger of being a more and more reviled figure as the years go on.

I came into public life during the 1960s when a whole bunch of us believed in our ability to change the world. And we did a lot of things.

I have such faith in the millennial generation, because they just don't think like other generations do. They really don't. And I truly believe it's going to be a phenomenal thing to watch, because they're very outspoken. They are living in a world right now where equality is something that the young kids are supporting. It's just what their focus is. Equality is everything to the kids. At least that's what I'm witnessing and it's an amazing thing to watch.

I love "Phenomenal Woman." The experiences she had of being African American in the U.S. - that itself is a task. I appreciate the hardships Maya Angelou went through for our generation. I'm super influenced by the black people that paved the way for us.

My biggest hope that we're going to make it here is that this thinking is being manifested & really employed by the young world. Will they be going fast enough to overcome the initiatives of the bureaucracies & the fears operative in those bureaucracies? It's a very touch & go question.

I grew during segregation in an all-black segregated neighborhood with segregated schools, etcetera. I was raised by a great father, my hero, who I much admired. So, I never really had anxiety in the way that someone like Obama would have. When he walks down the street alone, since no one knows who his mother is, they're just going to see him as a black guy.

These Negroes who go for integration and intermarriage are linking up with the very people who lynched their fathers, raped their mothers, and put their kid sisters in the kitchen to scrub floors.