Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
What's more important than who's going to be the first black manager is who's going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times.
I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.
A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.
Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
Any colour - so long as it's black.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died.
I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin' hell, but as long as they ain't free, I ain't free.
It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.
I'd like to be played as a child by Natalie Wood. I'd have some romantic scenes as Audrey Hepburn and have gritty black-and-white scenes as Patricia Neal.
Washington is the only city in the world where you can go to a black-tie dinner and there at the foot of the table is a television set up to catch a press conference.
Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.