Black or white good parts are hard to come by. A good actor with a good opportunity has a shot; without the opportunity it doesn't matter how good you are.
Denzel Washington

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?
Desmond Tutu

We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.
Saint Ignatius

The black groups that boycott certain films would do better to get the money together to make the films they want to see, or stay in church and leave us to our work.
Richard Pryor

I'm for human lib, the liberation of all people, not just black people or female people or gay people.
Richard Pryor

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.
David Foster Wallace

A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
Thurgood Marshall

To shipbrokers, coal was black gold.
Roald Dahl

In the early days, we just wore black onstage. Very bold, my dear. Then we introduced white, for variety, and it simply grew and grew.
Freddie Mercury

I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp - just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.
Dick Gregory

If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.
Spike Lee

I think my work shows that I love women. I understand where these types of criticisms are coming from because black people have been so dogged out in the media, they're just extra sensitive.
Spike Lee

I always give the example, if you turn on the radio today, black radio, Lenny Kravitz is not black. Bob Marley wasn't black: in the beginning, only white college stations played Bob Marley.
Spike Lee

It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.
Spike Lee

There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled.
Spike Lee

Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.
Spike Lee

I'd like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.
Spike Lee

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
Richard M. Nixon

I have reached a state in life where I can buy a whole house full of chairs and can bump into them until they are black and blue.
Mercedes McCambridge

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.
Huey Newton