5 Powerful Quotes from Black Authors

1.  Maya Angelou

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” 

2.  Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes

“To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity and to assert your own.”  

3. Desmond Tutu

 “For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.” 

4. Esi Edugyan

“Stories of the marginalized, it’s extremely important to get those out there, and for us to be reading them, and trying to imagine ourselves into other skins, and not closing ourselves down...It’s part of, I think, keeping the dialogue alive, and keeping empathy alive.” Esi Edugyan, on winning the Giller Prize for her novel, Washington Black

5. Austin Clarke

 “It takes us many years to learn that the passion for justice and the welfare of all, once it has been aroused, is the deepest one in moral life.”