Maya Angelou Quotes

Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.

Negrophobes exist. It is not hatred of the Negro, however, that motivates them; they lack the courage for that, or they have lost it. Hate is not inborn; it has to be constantly cultivated, to be brought into being, in conflict with more or less recognized guilt complexes. Hate demands existence and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behavior; in a sense, he has to become hate. That is why Americans have substituted discrimination for lynching. Each to his own side of the street.

Hate demands existence, and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behaviors; in a sense, he has to become hate. That is why the Americans have substituted discrimination for lynching.

It's almost impossible to separate the actions, or it's also, it's almost impossible to separate the oppression and exploitation, criminal oppression and criminal exploitation of the American negro from the color of the skin of the person who is the oppressor or the exploiter.

We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all America stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.

He wants to do you in cause the color of your skin.

I believe racism has killed more people than speed, heroin, or cancer, and will continue to kill until it is no more.

Race prejudice is the devil unchained.

America has allowed white people to kill and brutalize those they don't like.

With black people, there are 50 Hitlers over the course of history.

Now, personally, I am baffled by the concept of racial prejudice. Why hate someone based on the color of their skin when, if you take the time to get to know them as a human being, you can find so many other things to hate them for?

By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching.

Why hate someone for the color of their skin when there are much better reasons to hate them?

Today a racist is synonymous with race hatred. Hating someone is a pretty unpleasant thing and few people are capable of hating others. Long-term hatred is a pathological disorder.

I look at racism as one of the social demons. And, in its worst, it's violent and it's a systemic commitment to oppression.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'

I think that one of the positions we have taken around the question of race, is that we already know. We know. We know. We know. And so we don't need to look at it again. And yet everybody is still upset. Everybody is still being driven by their outrageous imagination to the point of killing people because they feel that a black man in front of them is a demon, or the Incredible Hulk.

South Africa used to seem so far away. Then it came home to me. It began to signify the meaning of white hatred here. That was what the sheets and the suits and the ties covered up, not very well. That was what the cowardly guys calling me names from their speeding truck wanted to happen to me, to all of me: to my people. That was what would happen to me if I walked around the corner into the wrong neighborhood. That was Birmingham. That was Brooklyn. That was Reagan. That was the end of reason. South Africa was how I came to understand that I am not against war; I am against losing the war.

As a matter of social class Ku Klux Klan would have been regarded as white trash.

There are many different types of racism from people of different colours and nationalities. There is no vaccine to fight this and no antibiotics to take. It's a dangerous and infectious virus which is strengthened by indifference and inaction.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

I know 100 percent what it's like to have people tell you that you can't hold an office because of your color, and to have people vote based on that belief.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

Racism is wrong, racism is very dangerous.