James Weldon Johnson Quotes

48 quotes in 849 categories

• She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves.
• This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.
• The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
• Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the…
• A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure…
• At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was not long before I was able to pick out…
• It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.
• O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
• As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
• Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will…
• Shortly after this I was made a member of the boys choir, it being found that I possessed a clear, strong soprano voice. I enjoyed…
• 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…
• In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die;…
• And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world.
• It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.
• It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.
• My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when…
• 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…
• 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…
• Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend…

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