Quotes about Race and Racial Diversity

Most popular race quotes

Our young must be taught that racial peculiarities do exist, but that beneath the skin, beyond the differing features, and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike. - Maya Angelou quote.
Our young must be taught that racial peculiarities do exist, but that beneath the skin, beyond the differing features, and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike.

brotherhood of man parenting

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

civil rights movement unity

I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.

civil rights movement

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

African-Americans civil rights movement iconic

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power. - Barbara Jordan quote.
Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

intellectualism

How could I explain a young Black boy to a grown man who had been born White? - Maya Angelou quote.
How could I explain a young Black boy to a grown man who had been born White?

African-Americans

I don't go for that hate talk. Negroes ain't got time to be hating anybody. We got to get together. - Maya Angelou quote.
I don't go for that hate talk. Negroes ain't got time to be hating anybody. We got to get together.

African-Americans

I, with millions of other Americans, have the same dream Martin Luther King Jr. had; when I wake up I wish some of the things I dreamt would be true. I wish that little Black and White boys and girls would hold hands without being shocked at their nearness to each other and say in a natural way, "We have overcome." - Maya Angelou quote.
I, with millions of other Americans, have the same dream Martin Luther King Jr. had; when I wake up I wish some of the things I dreamt would be true. I wish that little Black and White boys and girls would hold hands without being shocked at their nearness to each other and say in a natural way, "We have overcome."
Malcolm X was America's Molotov cocktail, thrown upon the White hope that all Black Americans would follow the nonviolent tenets of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Maya Angelou quote.
Malcolm X was America's Molotov cocktail, thrown upon the White hope that all Black Americans would follow the nonviolent tenets of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

African-Americans

We are not our brother's keeper; we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community. - Maya Angelou quote.
We are not our brother's keeper; we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community.

unity

I am America. I am the part you won't recognise, but get used to me. Black, confident, cocky. My name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me. - Muhammad Ali quote.
I am America. I am the part you won't recognise, but get used to me. Black, confident, cocky. My name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me.

civil rights movement identity

Accomplishments have no color.
To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow. - William Faulkner quote.
To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

equality

A minority group has "arrived" only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it. - Carl Rowan quote.
A minority group has "arrived" only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it.

society

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

civil rights

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. - Booker T. Washington quote.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

dignity

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine. - Dick Gregory quote.
Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.

African-Americans

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity. - Desmond Tutu quote.
Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.
Everybody's colored or else you wouldn't be able to see them.
Every true man has pride of race, and under appropriate circumstances, when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper. ... Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

American constitution

Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior, who have the best heart, the best brain. - Robert Ingersoll quote.
Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior, who have the best heart, the best brain.
After all, there is but one race—humanity.
Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.

morals

The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance. - Benjamin Disraeli quote.
The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance.
There are no 'white' or 'colored' signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle. - John F. Kennedy quote.
There are no 'white' or 'colored' signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

civil rights movement African-Americans

We have to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is talent and training, not color, that makes a ballet dancer.
Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may. - Frederick Douglass quote.
Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.

law inequality

The colour of the skin is in no way connected with strength of the mind or intellectual powers.
It was asserted that we were "a ragged set, crying for liberty." I reply to it, the whites have so long and so loudly proclaimed the theme of equal rights and privileges, that our souls have caught the flame also, ragged as we are.

African-Americans slavery

Black men, don't be ashamed to show your colors, and to own them.

African-Americans

The race-problem is a moral one. It is a question entirely of ideas. Its solution will come especially from the domain of principles. Like all the other great battles of humanity, it is to be fought out with the weapons of truth. - Alexander Crummell quote.
The race-problem is a moral one. It is a question entirely of ideas. Its solution will come especially from the domain of principles. Like all the other great battles of humanity, it is to be fought out with the weapons of truth.
The inspiration of the race is the race.
A white woman. A white woman has only one handicap to overcome—that of sex. I have two—both sex and race.

African-Americans women

No race can speak for another or give utterance to its striving goal. - Kelly Miller quote.
No race can speak for another or give utterance to its striving goal.
Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church. - Nadine Gordimer quote.
Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. - W.E.B Du Bois quote.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

poverty hardship

The individual man tires to escape the race.  And as soon as he ceases to represent the race, he represents man. - André Gide quote.
The individual man tires to escape the race.  And as soon as he ceases to represent the race, he represents man.

individuality

It is not races but individuals that are noble and courageous or ignoble and craven or considerate or persistent or philosophical or reasonable.  The race gets credit when the percentage of noble individuals is high. - Edwin Way Teale quote.
It is not races but individuals that are noble and courageous or ignoble and craven or considerate or persistent or philosophical or reasonable.  The race gets credit when the percentage of noble individuals is high.
The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black. - André Gide quote.
The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

racism

In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. - Harry Blackmun quote.
In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.

equality

The tears of the red, yellow, black, brown and white man are all the same. - Martin H. Fischer quote.
The tears of the red, yellow, black, brown and white man are all the same.

brotherhood of man equality

Until justice is blind to colour, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the colour of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. - Lyndon B. Johnson quote.
Until justice is blind to colour, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the colour of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

justice