49 Inspirational Black Quotes

In a world that is persistently shaped by diverse voices and profound wisdom, the words of Black leaders, thinkers, and creatives resonate with timeless inspiration and power. These quotes encapsulate struggles, triumphs, and a relentless spirit, offering guidance and motivation to all who seek it. From the poetic strength of Maya Angelou to the unwavering resolve of Martin Luther King Jr., these quotations reflect a spectrum of experiences and dreams. As you delve into this curated collection of the top 49 Inspirational Black Quotes, prepare to be uplifted, challenged, and moved by the enduring brilliance of these remarkable individuals. Let their words serve as a beacon of hope and a source of inspiration in your daily journey.

1. “At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.” - Carter G. Woodson

2. “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.” - Henry Ford

3. “I don't stand for black man's side, I don't stand for white man's side, I stand for God's side.” - Bob Marley

4. “Sarah Lynn strides out of the stairwell. Lawrence watches her go. The door slushes shut behind her, and he turns to me with a tightened jaw. I want to tell him: No, no, you've got it all wrong. I don't care if you kiss a white girl. I don't care if you love a white girl. I just wish you'd chosen a white girl worthy of your love.Lawrence's Adam's apple jerks up and down, and I realize that in addition to whatever else he's feeling, he's scared. He's in love with the darling of the school, Sarah Lynn Lancaster, ad he's afriad I'll expose his secret. I give a tiny shake of my head, wanting him to know he has nothing to fear, not from me.” - Lauren Myracle

5. “I don't know if you've noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror.” - Lewis Black

6. “Whose little boy are you?” - James Baldwin

7. “The trap had a ghastly perfection” - Stephen King

8. “the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.” - Stephen King

9. “Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.” - Stephen King

10. “Once again there was the desert, and that only.” - Stephen King

11. “They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.” - Stephen King

12. “They were close to the end of the beginning . . .” - Stephen King

13. “The stains could be seen only in the sunlight, so Ruth was never really aware of them until later, when she would stop at an outdoor cafe for a cup of coffee, and look down at her skirt and see the dark traces of spilled vodka or whiskey. The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: 'booze affects material as it does people'.” - Alice Sebold

14. “It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type ("light coming out of darkness"); weaving, the symbol of the "thread of life," fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection.” - Mircea Eliade

15. “I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.” - Johnny Cash

16. “Vengeance was one hell of a roommate.” - J.R. Ward

17. “Sometimes in life, from out of a myriad of prosaic decisions like what to eat and where to sleep and how to dress, a true crossroads is revealed. In these moments, when the fog of relative irrelevancy lifts and fate rolls out a demand for free will, there is only left or right – no option of four-by-fouring into the underbrush between two paths, no negotiating with the choice that has been presented. You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse. ” - J.R. Ward

18. “I'll serve something black. Bean soup, licorice, coffee. It'll be very grim, I promise. We'll cover the mirrors. We'll listen to Piaf. We'll read passages from Dostoyevsky.” - Stephanie Kallos

19. “Sometimes I'm a black. Not everyone realizes blackness has to be conferred upon you again and again. It's like getting your nails done. Or being pantsed. People assume I'm cool.” - Laura Yes Yes

20. “There is no shortage of well-known pirates, including: Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Blue beard, Yellowbeard, and Yellow beard with Black Roots, who surmised that, if blondes have more fun, then blond pirates must have a heck of a lot more fun.” - Cuthbert Soup

21. “I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.” - Marcus Garvey

22. “White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.” - Tom Robbins

23. “We got it." Val grinned and lifted her fist. "Wonder twin powers activate!" Ruth grinned back, knocking her fist into Val's. "Shape of two fucking lunatics.” - Holly Black

24. “His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin.” - George R.R. Martin

25. “I would wear pink because I knew my future was anything but rosy. I would accessorize myself to the hilt, and I would wear flirty shoes because my world needed more beauty to counter all the ugliness in it. I would wear pink because I hated gray, I didn’t deserve white, and I was sick of black.” - Karen Marie Moning

26. “America is a young dumb country and it needs all kinds of help. America is a dumb puppy with big teeth that bite and hurt. And we take care of America. We hold America to our bosom; we feed America, we make love to America. There wouldn't be an America if it wasn't for black people. So you have some dedicated black Americans who will die a million deaths to save America. And this is home for us. We don't know really about Africa. We talk it in a romantic sense, but America is it. And so, America is always going to be okay as long as black people don't totally lose their mind, cause we'll pick up the pieces and turn it into a new dance.” - Abiodun Oyewole

27. “My African roots made me what I am today. They’re the reason I’m from the Dominican Republic. They’re the reason I exist at all. To these roots I owe everything.” - Junot Diaz

28. “I think in black.” - Gareth Pugh

29. “...anyone still attempting to argue that Ebonics is a problem for black students or that it is somehow connected to a lack of intelligence or lack of desire to achieve is about as useful as a Betamax video cassette player, and it's time for those folks to be retired, be they teachers, administrators, or community leaders, so the rest of us can try to do some real work in the service of equal access for black students and all students. (15)” - Adam J. Banks

30. “So when we looked at de picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t nobody left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah wuz’s s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark chile as me. So ah ast, ‘where is me? Ah don’t see me.’… ‘Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!’Den dey all laughed real hard. But before Ah seen de picture Ah thought Ah wuz just like the rest.” - Zora Neale Hurston

31. “Me and my insatiable curiosity. If there's any justice in the world, I was a very good cat in a past life.” - Rhi Etzweiler

32. “The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.” - Maya Angelou

33. “Don’t you dare come into my world and tell me what color the ocean is! It’s black. Black as midnight. Black and awful!” - Nadia Scrieva

34. “I see black light (his last words)” - Victor Hugo

35. “A very long time ago, some 2.5 million years B.C., the mother of human species as we know it, our ultimate ancestor, appeared in East Africa... She was four feet tall and probably black..” - Norman F. Cantor

36. “Black is associated with power because all vibrational energies of all colors are drawn into one place, ready to be used. Wear black when you feel the need to draw energy to yourself for reviving your strength, energy, and will.” - Tae Yun Kim

37. “Look at how beautiful this ink is. Now do you understand why I needed clear water? Water is the brightness of the day and the whiteness of the paper. Black is the velvet of night and the satiny ink of the paintbrush. If you know how to make ink correctly, you will never again be afraid of nightmares." Hokusai (The Old Man Mad About Drawing)” - Françoise Place

38. “Never Be Still unless you're resting. If you're not at rest, you should be taking action.” - Brian A. Brown

39. “When the prophet, a complacent fat man,Arrived at the mountain-topHe cried: "Woe to my knowledge!I intended to see good white landsAnd bad black lands—But the scene is grey.” - Stephen Crane

40. “Andy once clipped a magazine article about how black dogs are always the last to be adopted at shelters and, therefore, more likely to be put down. Which is totally Dog Racism, if you ask me.” - Stephanie Perkins

41. “...in other spheres of Victorian Society the appeal of a young woman dressed in black from head to toe was acknowledged. In Victorian popular culture, widows had two manifestations: the battleaxe and the man-eater, preying upon husbands and bachelors alike. Even today, an attractive, dark-haired person dressed in all black has vampiric connotations, as the novelist Alison Lurie has noted, 'so archetypally terrifying and thrilling, that any black-haired, pale-complexioned man or woman who appears clad in all black formal clothes projects a destructive eroticism, sometimes without concious intention.” - Catharine Arnold

42. “When asked why I am single, my reply is simply; I consider myself a black pearl rare in my authenticity, adding a mysterious beauty to the select few who can recognize & even fewer who appreciate my worth. So instead of dating, I throw myself into working in the field. If my Boaz recognizes me amongst the black rocks...great! If not, the magnificence of my rarity will simply radiate onto those working the fields as well in the form of teaching, which is what I do.” - Sanjo Jendayi

43. “Color is the overpowering of black; white – the final victory over black.” - Dejan Stojanovic

44. “If I couldn't do that much for my master then what kind of butler would I be, really.” - Sebastian Michaelis

45. “One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction – nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.” - H.G. Wells

46. “... paint in blue and black...sometimes gray - the colors of night - occasionally I surprise you with a mustard yellow, but then, I am a poet ...” - John Geddes

47. “My fingers combed through my dark hair, short and straight, landing in choppy, uneven ends nearly level with my chin. The color reminded me of every evil character in any fairy tale. It seemed all were characteristically black; black hair, black eyes, black clothing, black demeanor, and black intent. I never thought I was truly a villainous character, not like I knew my father to be, but I was his offspring and devoid of any princess-like characteristics, so that left only the wicked side of the story to play. In my dreams, though, I imagined myself more like Snow White―wavy, raven hair, a perfectly fair complexion, bathed in rose scents, and exhibiting a natural feminine grace that would dance musical circles around both Ginger and Elizabeth. No, I never hoped for such a thing to be real, but I dared to pretend it with perfect clarity in my dreams.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

48. “People decide how to live their own lives! A scum bastard doesn't have the right to chain anyone down!" -Sven to Torneo” - Kentaro Yabuki

49. “Fear of change was a weakness” - J.R. Ward