Best Black Women Quotes

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.

Don’t settle for average. Bring your best to the moment. Then, whether it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had. We need to live the best that’s in us.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

When I see the leadership roles black women are taking today I am very encouraged.

When I was at Baylor, I wasn’t fully happy because I couldn’t be all the way out. It feels so good saying it: I am a strong, black lesbian woman.

This is a career about images. It’s celluloid; they last for ever. I’m a black woman from America. My people were slaves in America, and even though we’re free on paper and in law, I’m not going to allow you to enslave me on film, in celluloid, for all to see.

. . . no Black woman can become an intellectual without decolonizing her mind.

I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our health.

If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.

It’s really not enough to just have black women. A really good idea could be to comment on how they are treated by society.

The truth is there are two hundred white women raped in America by a black man for every one black woman raped by whites.

To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.

My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don’t think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you’re not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let’s really get basic and persecute ugly people!

I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don’t have to keep saying we don’t have work for black women. But right now I don’t know what’s next. I hope that there are more opportunities to come my way.

God in my mind gives you what you need. So, if you need God to be a black woman and you need that for whatever your reasons are, then perhaps your blessings will come in that form.

I always knew I’d be a millionaire by age thirty-two. In fact, I am going to be the richest black woman in America.

We know the road of lack of recognition, of people telling us that we can’t headline a movie because black women don’t translate overseas, that every time we try to break the glass ceiling, people say no, people push back. And it’s everything that people don’t see out there.

They allow us to disrespect our Black woman. A lot of these things would be considered criminal if it were to be carried out in the streets. That’s like when they tell you after you buy your VHS and you rent movies they tell you not to copy the movies.

I am a product of every other black woman before me who has done or said anything worthwhile. Recognizing that I am part of history is what allows me to soar.

Having Black hair is unique in that Black women change up styles a lot. You can walk down one street block in New York City and see 10 different hairstyles that Black women are wearing: straight curls, short cuts, braids – we really run the gamut.

There’s no way I can represent for everyone. I can’t represent for all women or all big women or all black women. It’s important for people not to make celebrities their source of who they should be in life. I can’t take on the pressure of being perfect. Nobody is.

I’ve liked different women at different times in my life. I’ve been attracted to white women. I’ve been attracted to black women. I’ve been attracted to Asian women. I’ve been attracted to various subspecies of women. I can say with gratitude that I’ve been able to experiment.

There are enough negative images of Black women out there and I did not want to portray Dorothy Vaughn in any stereotype. I wanted to make sure that her integrity was preserved.

I don’t think of God as an old white man with no belly button, nor even an old black woman with no belly button. But I agree that God is something eternal. Something cannot come out of nothing. I believe God is Everything. And I believe in infinity.

Black women, historically, have been doubly victimized by the twin immoralities of Jim Crow and Jane Crow. … Black women, faced with these dual barriers, have often found that sex bias is more formidable than racial bias.

Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.

Black women’s feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their own extended family networks have stimulated a more generalized ethic of care where black women feel accountable to all the black community’s children.

I suggest that Black feminist thought consists of specialised knowledge created by African-American women which clarifies a standpoint of and for Black women. In other words, Black feminist thought encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live it.

We have Latinas in California making 55 cents on the dollar. Black women making 63 cents on the dollar. White women making 78 cents on the dollar. It doesn’t change very much year by year, it might go up or down a penny, but oftentimes, the years that it goes up are the same years that men are making a little bit more. It’s pretty much always in proportion.

The potential significance of Black feminist thought goes far beyond demonstrating that African-American women can be theorists. Like Black feminist practice, which it reflects and which it seeks to foster, Black feminist thought can create a collective identity among African-American women about the dimensions of a Black women’s standpoint. Through the process of rearticulating, Black feminist thought can offer African-American women a different view of ourselves and our worlds

Work for black women has been an important and valued dimension of Afrocentric definitions of black motherhood.