I was born black and female.
LORRAINE HANSBERRYDo I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually — without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts? This is what I puzzle about.
More Lorraine Hansberry Quotes
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Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
I happen to believe that most people – and this is where I differ from many of my contemporaries, or at least as they express themselves – I think that virtually every human being is dramatically interesting. Not only is he dramatically interesting, he is a creature of stature whoever he is.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
One for whom bread- food- is not enough.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
I think that the glorious thing about the human race is that it does change the world — constantly. The world or ‘life’ may seem to more often overwhelm the human being’s capacity for struggling against being overwhelmed which is remarkable and exhilarating.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
[T]here is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture — in front of us — our own little mirage that we think is the future.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
American straightforwardness is almost as disarming as Americans invariably think it is.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
What you ain’t never understood is that I ain’t got nothing, don’t own nothing, ain’t never really wanted nothing that wasn’t for you. There ain’t nothing as precious to me…There ain’t nothing worth holding on to, money, dreams, nothing else–
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
Mama – Mama – I want so many things… I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
There is always something left to love. And if you haven’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
Seems like God don’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams – but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
Never be afraid to sit a while and think.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!” “Finish your eggs first.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
There may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
Beneatha: You didn’t tell us what Alaiyo means… for all I know, you might be calling me Little Idiot or something… … Asagai: It means… it means One for Whom Bread–Food–Is Not Enough.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
Though it be a thrilling and marvellous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so – doubly dynamic – to be young, gifted and black.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
That’s what being eccentric means–being natural.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists – nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
The grim possibility is that she who ‘hides her brains’ will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with ‘hidden brains’ or none at all.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY -
It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively.
LORRAINE HANSBERRY