2. “I don’t need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like… happens.” – Kiley Reid
3. “The world is simply a better place when there are more voices in the room.” – Deborah Jacobs
4. “The Constitution gives you the right, as a white man, to have a rifle in your home. The Constitution gives you the right to protect yourself. Why is it ‘ominous’ when black people even talk of having rifles? Why don’t we have the right to self-defense? Is it because maybe you know we’re going to have to defend ourselves against you?” –
5. “Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women, and children being shot by the police.” – Tomi Adeyemi
6. “Mostly, they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category—black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates
7. “I can’t bring myself to watch yet another video, not because I don’t care, but because we’re all just a few videos away from becoming completely desensitized. The public execution of Black folks will never be normal.” – Andrena Sawyer
8. “I understand we all have our differences. But while learning about history I’ve read about white people coming together, Jews coming together, Spanish coming together, different cultures and religions understanding and coming together despite their differences.” – Jonathan Anthony Burkett
9. “Let me tell you, here and now as a black person, we don’t expect charity. We just expect the and dignity, to which the white person is entitled in this world by default.” – Abhijit Naskar
10. “Silence is the language of realization, action is the language of revolution.” – Abhijit Naskar
11. “Blacks do not need allies who fight for our inclusion; rather, we need people who are possessed of the basic belief that we are human and that any arguments that depend on rejecting that proposition are tyrannical, unjust, and to be fought.” – Christopher J. Lebron
12. “Injustice isn’t one’s problem. It’s our problem. Yes, your life does matter. But right now, our life is a threat.” – Shirdley S.
13. “Contrary to popular belief, Black women smile, but we’re not obligated to! We experience a range of emotions just like every other living creature. Stop weaponizing our emotions.” – Kierra C.T. Banks
14. “Paradise is a world where everything is a sanctuary and nothing is a gun.” – Danez Smith
15. “Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning.” – Idowu Koyenikan
16. “Dear officers of the law, if you find it difficult to maintain order without being a badge-bearing barbarian, seek professional help; for you are ill—terribly ill—and the cure for your illness is education.” – Abhijit Naskar
17. “Resist when the world tries to convince you otherwise.” – Nic Stone
18. “Yes, we have lived through tokens and concessions, but white power remains white. And what it appears to surrender with one hand it obsessively clutches in the other.” – James Baldwin
19. “I will raise my head high wherever I go because of my African pride, and nobody will take that away from me.” – Idowu Koyenikan
20. “But if you start from the idea that Blacks are indeed human, then every commitment to equality after that will be unshakable.” – Christopher J. Lebron
21. “Demanding equality and equity isn’t radicalism. This is realism.” – D.B. Mays
22. “Better sleepless for justice than soulless in indifference; better sleepless for equality than soulless in apathy; better sleepless for harmony than soulless in complacency.” – Abhijit Naskar
23. “We live in a society where race is one of the biggest indicators of your success in life. There are sizable racial divides in wealth, health, life expectancy, infant mortality, incarceration rates, and so much more. We cannot look at a society where racial inequality is so universal and longstanding and say, ‘This is all the doing of a few individuals with hate in their hearts.’ It just doesn’t make sense.” – Ijeoma Oluo
24. “This nation was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.” – John F. Kennedy
25. “To the civilized revolutionary, not a single human life is expendable, even that of the oppressor, whereas to the mindless terrorist, even the loss of innocent lives is acceptable in the pursuit of their mission.” – Abhijit Naskar
26. “Indifference is acceptable from a vegetable, not from a human being.” – Abhijit Naskar
27. “We have won the battle of making the White House human again, but the war has just begun—the war against systemic racism, against misogyny, against homophobia, against islamophobia, against gun violence, and against post-pandemic health, and economic crisis.” – Abhijit Naskar
28. “Productive rather than pitiful. Human rather than . Dependable rather than destructive. A man rather than a menace.” – Razel Jones
29. “It is always a bit of a gut punch to realize that someone you have been sitting next to for months or even years secretly harbors views that deny your basic humanity as a Black woman. No matter how many times it happens, I have yet to get used to it.” – Ijeoma Oluo
30. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” –
31. “We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right.” – Aretha Franklin
32. “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man—the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel
33. “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” – Eugene Ionesco
34. “Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness.” – Ola Joseph
35. “Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
36. “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed.” –
37. “I think police brutality is probably extremely severe in America, but racism is alive everywhere. Everywhere.” –
38. “White should never be held in higher regard than black lives.” – Rachel Cargle
39. “When we’re talking about diversity, it’s not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.” – Ava DuVernay
40. “We need justice for George Floyd. We all witnessed his murder in broad daylight. We’re broken and we’re disgusted. We cannot normalize this pain. No more senseless killings of human beings. No more seeing people of color as less than human. We can no longer look away.” –
41. “The cross wasn’t just an act of lofty compassion, it is also a deliberate model for social justice.” – Andrena Sawyer
42. “Racial injustice is America’s original sin and deepest silence.” – Jeanne Theoharis
43. “When oppression and injustice are not up for discussion, insurrections and protections when wrongs aren’t corrected.” – D.B. Mays
44. “When justice becomes a commodity in the marketplace of the court system, the citizens must take it upon themselves to conduct a complete overhaul of the very democracy they are living in.” – Abhijit Naskar
45. “The revolutionary cries of Black Lives Matter rest upon a simple yet poignant foundation—that Black lives, which haven’t mattered, should matter; and that we must reform the criminal justice system, greatly change if not abolish the police, and grapple with systemic racism.” – Michael Eric Dyson
46. “And with truth and justice, we can rewrite those lines of history with hope.” – Laura Chouette
47. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” – Robert F. Kennedy
48. “George Floyd’s murder is not only an outrage. It is the latest manifestation of a system that callously devalues the lives of Black people. Our struggle is and always has been about justice—not justice on paper, but real justice in the real lives of real people.” –
49.“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
50. “People don’t realize what’s really going on in this country. There are a lot of things that are going on that are unjust. People aren’t being held for. And that’s something that needs to change. That’s something that this country stands for—freedom, liberty and justice for all.” – Colin Kaepernick
51. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu
52. “The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.” – Ijeoma Oluo
53. “The fear of offense is a really small price to pay for freedom.” – Andrena Sawyer
54. “Ignorance is not bliss. Oblivion is apathetic. Silence is acquiescence.” – Shirdley S.
55. “We climb hills of elevation in hopes of reaching the other side where there is the unification of protection for every generation.” – Lynfree J.
56. “Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean this fist, but it does mean resist.” – D.B. Mays
57. “All lives can’t matter if Black lives don’t matter.” – D.B. Mays
58. “Fear not—you are my fiery sisters and brothers. Oppressors will tremble hearing your footsteps and bigots will shiver at the sight of your arrival.” – Abhijit Naskar
59. “Accountability is the only real beginning to change.” – Daniel Abott
60. “We knew how to combine our strengths in order to overcome our weaknesses, and how to live off faith when nothing else was available.” – Aberjhani
61. “We all have a sphere of influence. Each of us needs to find our own sources of courage so that we can begin to speak.” – Beverly Daniel Tatum
62. “I have seen that meaningful dialogue can lead to effective action. Change is possible.” – Beverly Daniel Tatum
63. “It’s important for us to also understand that the phrase, ‘Black Lives Matter’ simply refers to the notion that there’s a specific vulnerability for African Americans that needs to be addressed. It’s not meant to suggest that other lives don’t matter. It’s to suggest that other folks aren’t experiencing this particular vulnerability.” –
64. “It’s up to all of us—Black, White, everyone—no matter how well-meaning we think we might be, to do the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out.” –
65. “Have a vision. Be demanding.” – Colin Powell
66. “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” –
67. “Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.” – Coretta Scott King
68. “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” –
69. “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” – Moshe Dayan
70. “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” – W.E.B. Du Bois
71. “Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.” –
72. “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” – Nelson Mandela
73. “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” – Indira Gandhi
74. “Protest is not the end of progress, it is the beginning. I stand with Minneapolis. I believe in us. Change is gonna come.” – Lizzo
75. “It belongs to the very substance of nonviolence never to destroy or damage another person’s feeling of self worth, even an opponent’s.” – Bernard Haring
76. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain
77. “Prejudices are the props of civilization.” – André Gide
78. “It is not our differences that separate us. It is the denial of the beauty and rightness of those differences that separate us.” – Razel Jones
79. “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” – Mother Teresa
80. “There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.” – Michelle Obama
81. “I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.” – Rosa Parks
82. “The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.” – Henry Louis Gates
83. “Black history isn’t a separate history. This is all of our history, this is American history, and we need to understand that. It has such an impact on kids and their values and how they view black people.” – Karyn Parsons
84. “Don’t worry about what I am now, for what I will be, I am gradually becoming.” – Idowu Koyenikan
85. “It’s also about Oscar. Aiyana. Trayvon. Rekia. Michael. Eric. Tamir. John. Ezell. Sandra. Freddie. Alton. Philando. It’s even about that little boy in 1955 who nobody recognized at first—Emmett.” – Angie Thomas
86. “America doesn’t mean white or color. America means celebration of diversity.” – Abhijit Naskar
87. “We have to teach, tell, and show Black girls that they are beautiful—that there is no standard of beauty, only defining it. And we, Black girls, define beauty, too. , shade, shape, and features are beautiful. We set trends, and the world follows.” – D.B. Mays
88. “If we go back long enough, every single person on earth comes from a . That makes all of us black, even if some look less black than others.” – Abhijit Naskar
89. “Time has come to be the change. Time has come to stop looking for good moves against blacks.” – Vineet Raj Kapoor
90. “America, birthed from the soil of a stolen seed, was impregnated by a bastard named ‘Insurrection.’” – Reginald Williams
91. “It’s time to once again start dreaming and working towards the impossible dream—the dream of freedom not oppression, the dream of assimilation not discrimination, and above all, the dream of ascension not descension.” – Abhijit Naskar
92. “If you haven’t always felt that America was burning, you are part of the problem and you may want to consider joining the camp of those looking for a solution to put an end to this nightmarish reality.” – Louis Yako
93. “No matter how many times my dad urged me to reach for the stars, my understanding of the universe was still confined by the world’s limited notion of what a Black country girl from the South could do or who she could become.” – Brittany K. Barnett
94. “I brought Grand Rapids with me to Newaygo. I brought difference. I was used to a fluid concept of harmony. I was used to diversity. Homogenous harmony has walls. As a fourteen-year-old boy in Newaygo, I felt those walls.” – Daniel Abott
95. “Change your default. Take the risk of expecting the next black man you encounter to more likely be an opportunity than a threat.” – Razel Jones
96. “Just because you know me does not mean that I am not Black. I am Black. I am thankfully Black. I am Black just like the person you are hurling your insult at.” – Razel Jones
97. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
98. “We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers. Our abundance has brought us neither peace of mind nor serenity of spirit.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
99. “We don’t want to see targets burning. We want to see the system that sets up for systemic racism burned to the ground.” – Killer Mike
100. “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.” –
101. “We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.” – Herbert Spencer
102. “Much of life is time and circumstance. I see that now.” – Tayari Jones
103. “Your essence is of no more significance than her, him, they, us, and I.” – Shirdley S.
104. “A line between white and black had been drawn in my life. I straddled that line with an ache I had no name for—an ache I now understand as identity crisis.” – Daniel Abott
105. “It’s true, some will let you down. Some of your race have let you down too. But your default view of your race hasn’t likely changed.” – Razel Jones
106. “My heart was beating fast, but it wasn’t the beat of fear. It was the beat of frustration—frustrated to be treated like a criminal when no crime had occurred.” – Razel Jones
107. “There are many problems to address, and we cannot avoid them indefinitely. We cannot continue to be silent. We must begin to speak, knowing that words alone are insufficient.” – Beverly Daniel Tatum
108. “His facial features were at odds with each other. The narrow nose said one thing, but his lush lips told a different version of the same story. That story was that this Indian was half Negro.” – Arlene L. Walker
109. “We’ve come a long way in our thinking, but also in our moral decay. I can’t imagine Dr. King watching the Real Housewives or Jersey Shore.” – Samuel L. Jackson
110. “Here is a new musical phenomenon—not songs written for black musicians by white composers, not humiliating parodies that grope for a laugh, joking at the black singers’ expense. Black composers and lyricists, black musicians excellent in their own right. Not merely excellent, but daring and vibrant and wholly original.” – Julie Berry
111. “It is necessary that I should die for my people; but my spirit will rise from the grave and the whole world will know that I was right.” – Abhijit Naskar
112. “There are those who say to you, ‘We are rushing this issue of civil rights.’ I say we are 172 years late.” – Hubert Humphrey
113. “The time is always right to do what is right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
114. “If I don’t have the right to deem your life, what you see and hear and feel, a lie, why do you have the right to do that to me? Why do you deserve to be believed and people of color don’t?” – Ijeoma Oluo
115. “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.” –
116. “If you believe in a cause, be willing to stand up for that cause with a million people or by yourself.” – Otis S. Johnson
117. “Slavery was never something that shocked me. What shocks me is how Black people have not yet overcome the odds and we’re such strong smart people. Why can’t we just stand together?” – Jonathan Anthony Burkett
118. “When it comes to Black Lives Matter, I think what folks that are writing ‘All Lives Matter’ need to understand is that for some people black lives don’t matter at all. So for us, black lives matter. So, while you may have the best intentions in saying, ‘All Lives Matter,’ remember: For some people, black lives don’t matter at all.” – Ashton Kutcher
119. “As long as people can be judged by the color of their skin, the problem is not solved.” – Oprah Winfrey
120. “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” – Maya Angelou
121. “A democracy of civilized people practicing indifference is far more savage than a tribe of cannibals, for at least the cannibals do not pretend to be civilized.” – Abhijit Naskar
122. “People still get shot because of their color. People still get distrusted because of their religion. People still get sneered at because of their gender and sexuality. Does this look like a civilized world?” – Abhijit Naskar
123. “Let’s make America great. We have not been great, white people. We have chosen to live in our bubbles.” – Daniel Abott
124. “Yes, make no mistake, racism—like sexism, patriotism, and ethnonationalism—is a form of governance in that it consistently prevents change and maintains the status quo by deflecting attention from the core issues; by pitting people against each other.” – Louis Yako
125. “I learned that people will practice racism and hate simply because they can or because they know that they can get away with it.” – Louis Yako
126. “America has always been burning for many people. If you haven’t felt that America has always been burning, then you are—consciously or unconsciously—part of the structural, systemic, and calculated racism and marginalization committed against Blacks and other marginalized people in America.” – Louis Yako
127. “Our fellow brothers and sisters are physically free, but psychologists are still enslaved and colonized. That is why they always treat, serve, respect, and address Black and White people differently.” – DJ Kyos
128. “At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being.” – Friedrich Otto Hertz
129. “No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people; and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.” – Marian Anderson
130. “It is white people’s responsibility to be less fragile. People of color don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible.” – Robin DiAngelo
131. “Enough is enough! What will it take? A civil war? A new president? Violent riots? It’s tiring. I’m tired. The country is tired! You don’t put fear in people when you do this, you just show how cowardly you are, and how America is really not the land of the free.” – Cardi B
132. “I see and feel everyone’s pain, outrage, and frustration. I stand with those who are calling out the ingrained racism and violence toward people of color in our country. We have had enough.” –
133. “There is no noise as powerful as the sound of the marching feet of a determined people.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
134. “I’m wheeling my bike along the sidewalk, watching all the white faces watching me.” – Simon Van der Velde
135. “The institutional narrowness promoted in public education mutes the creative genius of most boys of color. The marginalization of a young king’s creativity is an assault on his thinking; it’s an act of incarcerating his thoughts.” – Reginald Williams
136. “Either through implicit or blind bias, the spirits of young kings are bullied into being subordinate to whiteness.” – Reginald Williams
137. “The President held up a Bible, an assassin aimed a gun. What happened next?” – Jeffrey Rasley
138. “Our world is not colorless. It is colorful, and we’re better for it.” – Razel Jones
139. “We were beautifully different, and that was okay.” – Razel jones
140. “My fortune within corporate America has always been held hostage by white solidarity.” – Talisa Lavarry
141. “You can’t tell us how to feel, how much it hurts, or how to mourn.” – Carlos Wallace
142. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” – Shirley Chisholm
143. “If now isn’t a good time for the truth, I don’t see when we’ll get to it.” – Nikki Giovanni
144. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
145. “Remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” –
146. “Truth is powerful and it prevails.” – Sojourner Truth
147. “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” – Coretta Scott King