top of page
Exlpore more Being quotes

"You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself."

"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."

"There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved."

"No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence."
Explore more quotes by James Weldon Johnson

"Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience."

"My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her."

"The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition."

"But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form."

"There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it."

"My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest."

"I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race."

"The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice."

"My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals."
bottom of page