Black History Month 2014 Quotes: Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Bill Cosby, More

20 inspiring quotes on shared humanity and resilience.
Black History Month 2014 Quotes: Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Bill Cosby, More
Poet Maya Angelou reads a poem during a ceremony to present South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Cape Town the William J. Fulbright Prize for International Understanding on Nov. 21, 2008. (Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)
Tara MacIsaac
2/11/2014
Updated:
7/18/2015

Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.

-Coretta Scott King, activist

 

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, U.S. track and field athlete

 

 

Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us.

-Susan L. Taylor, journalist

 

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, author and politician

 

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

-Robert F. Kennedy

 

 

We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.

-Carter Woodson, 1926, historian

 

Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.

-Carol Moseley-Braun, politician and lawyer

 

I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.

-Oprah Winfrey

 

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

-Booker T. Washington, author and politician

 

 

Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.

-William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist

 

There never were in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.

-Michel de Montaigne

 

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

-Booker T. Washington

 

 

 

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

-Eldridge Cleaver

 

Each person must live their life as a model for others. 

-Rosa Parks

 

 

 *Image of a laundry basket via Shutterstock