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Top 20 Black History Month Quotations

I am America. ~ Muhammad Ali

1. I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. 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 The Greatest (1975)

2. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.
-- Maya Angelou "Still I rise," And Still I Rise (1978)

3. Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.
-- Arthur Ashe

4. Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice.
-- Ray Charles

5.You have to believe in yourself when no one else does -- that makes you a winner right there.
-- Venus Williams

6. There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution...
-- Frederick Douglass

7. You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
-- Billie Holiday

8. Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.
-- Quincy Jones

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

And still I rise. ~ Maya Angelou

10. Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

11. The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that's where it's at.
-- Jesse Owens, Blackthink (1970)

12.I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear.
-- Rosa Parks

13. Have a vision. Be demanding.
-- Colin Powell

14. Be black, shine, aim high. -- Leontyne Price

15. Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable. -- Kenyan Proverb

16. Freedom is never given; it is won.
-- A. Philip Randolph in keynote speech given at the Second National Negro Congress in 1937

17. When I found I had crossed that line, [on her first escape from slavery, 1845] I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything.
-- Harriet Tubman

18. Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.
-- Cornel West, Race Matters

19. Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
-- Booker T. Washington

20. Yes we can.
-- Barack Obama, President of the United States

More Resources for Black History Month

Black History Poems | Famous African-Americans

Black History Lesson Plans | Black History Resources

also see in Holidays ->  MLK Day | President's Day