"I will not sit in a room..." - Quote by Maya Angelou
I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'
More by Maya Angelou
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up ... our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.”
“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise.”
“Each of us has the power and responsibility to become a rainbow in the clouds.”
More on Racism
“When Negroes looked for the second phase, the realization of equality, they found that many of their white allies had quietly disappeared.... To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.”
“If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to pull out the knife.”
“Is a civilization worth the name, which requires, for its existence the very doubtful prop of a racial legislation and a lynch law?”
More on Language
“There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.”
“Every word is a preconceived judgment.”
“We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations!”