Top 67 Quotes & Sayings by Melissa Harris-Perry

I don't know what people mean when they ask me whether I'm embracing my whiteness. Whiteness is ubiquitous.

I would want to know that my daughter is going to enjoy a long, happy and healthy life.

You just have to be strong if you're a black woman.

You can`t use hair spray, because hair spray is going to affect the ozone. I`m trying to figure out - okay, I`m in my room in New York City and I want to put a little spray, so that I can - all right? Right?

The problem is that many of our policymakers want to base sweeping laws on those feelings.

Stereotypes work to help divide women from recognizing their common interests.

In the 1990s, Michael Jordan was the preeminent athlete in the country. And when the product with his name on it seemed to be linked to crime and violence in poor communities, many called on him to address it. They asked him to weigh in on robberies, on kids robbed for their high-priced Air Jordan sneakers. But he wouldn`t.

I do think that we have to be careful not to assume that getting a perm or wearing a blonde wig is a desire for whiteness. It may or may not be. Listen, I live in a poor black neighborhood where women wear blue hair, green hair, and all kinds of stuff. So, I simply see it as a different set of choices.

On the track, you`re Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you`re in the dressing rooms, you are nothing more than a dirty Negro.

I would agree if the race were today, most likely, our nominee would be Donald Trump, but it isn`t today.

I am a supporter of much of the Arab Spring, as a matter of indigenous self-determination. So, I see the United States' role in Libya as an appropriately restrained one in providing some international support for the work of those trying to bring democratic change against a regime that has undoubtedly been dictatorial, particularly in the past twenty years.

Popular films are so powerful and compelling that it's often easier to accept their versions of history than the much more complicated true stories.

It actually does matter what people think about you.

Bill Cosby no longer on Temple University`s board. His name has been removed from various college scholarships and buildings. Two dozen colleges and universities have rescinded honorary degrees they gave him.

Donald Trump has changed the rule and so have the stations and the media coverage.

I learned that you can't write a book in the margins of your life. I'd forgotten how much uninterrupted time it takes to write chapters, and how you have to push everything else aside and really focus.

Having a white parent undoubtedly makes for a different childhood experience than having two black parents.

We were looking for the Rick Perries, the Scott Walkers, the Bobby Jindals, all to probably still be on the stage.They`re all gone and [Donald] Trump has sucked the oxygen out of race and made it a national race courtesy a little bit of NBC making him a celebrity, second of all, just his personality.

I hate to play YouTube.

Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the household's we start making better investments.

In a moment when young black voters were key to the election and the reelection of a black president, when the Department of Justice has been led these years by the first two African-American attorneys general, when many big cities boast African-American league prosecutors and police chiefs and mayors, even in this moment, why is it that it still feels to so many young people that there is more power for change on the court than in the courts?

Jeb`s Bush front-runner status was short lived, to say the least. But who could have predicted that the Republican front-runner would be someone that we were not even thinking about.Donald Trump was not even on anyone`s radar back then and Mike Pence was getting more attention than he was.

Terrifying mass shooting and high-profile officer-involved incidents have dominated the national conversation on gun violence in recent years. But most deaths by gun are not headline-grabbing massacres. They`re more private, more intimate, and perhaps in that way, even more horrifying. Domestic violence, make no mistake, domestic violence is a gun issue.

Drink lots of water, and nap. I've made some really big messes along the way, whether on the academic side or on the media side. It hasn't been a straight path. But a lot of those mess-ups have led to opportunities, so I guess I'd say be fearless, and keep bottled water with you, so you don't dehydrate.

Therapists are less likely to perceive a black woman as sad; instead they see her as angry or anxious.

For me, success is when I'm making a contribution and fully engaging all of my talents. In terms of the key quality, it's being willing to continue to believe in yourself even when other people don't, and being able to fail and to come back.

The Republicans don't need black folks to vote Republican, they just need them to not vote.

I'm horrible with money. I make bad business decisions every hour of the day.

As we watch Republican candidates like Scott Walker and Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal and George Pataki, and even Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, guys who are either out or who are really struggling to stay in, it might seem like the Republican Party is no longer a very strong party. There may be people who use the Republican label, but the party itself might feel like it`s in a bit of disarray.

Even if you think it is right for Bill Cosby to face charges, it`s impossible to ignore that the system which just charged him is a system that has been indicted by a national social movement, as being unable or unwilling to deliver meaningful and just outcomes.

From childhood forward, our hair is one of the most critical, defining aspects of our embodied selves as black women: how we get it done... how we have to focus on it... the questions we have to answer about it... and so forth.

I had a friend say to me the other day, I hate when I see Jonathan Metzl on your show because I know it`s bad news. I know that there has been a shooting.

I think the idea that you're somehow rejecting whiteness if you don't identify yourself as biracial is odd because everybody engages in whiteness. If you live in America, you're doing whiteness all the time, even if you have no white people in your family.

I can understand how someone might read wearing a blonde wig as a desire to be white, but I suspect that the same shaming smirk can happen if you wear a big afro or any number of other hairstyles.

I just keep thinking of how many times I`ve heard Ferguson effect. And I`ve heard it because of protests, officers are afraid to do their job because of - because of a YouTube effect.

A recent analysis of election coverage by the Tindall report which tracks network nicely news programs found that Bernie Sanders received just ten minutes out of 857 minutes of campaign coverage in 2015. Compare that to 234 minutes for Donald Trump, and 113 for Hillary Clinton.

Housing affects everything, and we continue to live in very, very segregated communities.

Think of how hard it would be to create a gender-based movement across racial lines as long as one group believes that it has to be strong while seeing the other group as passive and weak. We could also go into the stereotypes of the saucy, mercurial Latina and the docile, easily-dominated Asian woman.

According to the CDC, more than one in three women and one in four men in the United States have been victims of domestic violence. It is a widespread public health problem, and every year 1,600 women and 700 men are killed by their intimate partners. One of the biggest risk factors that domestic violence will become fatal is the presence of a gun.

I don't think that a white woman is in denial when she dyes her hair blonde. And I actually think we are the most varied in terms of the choices we make about our hair. Some of it may be political or psychological, but an awful lot of it is just aesthetic, how we like to view ourselves when we look in the mirror.

The debate was a chance for senator [Bernie] Sanders to have a game-changing moment to recapture the news cycle and build momentum going into 2016 and he took his best shot at having a moment.

I`m a sexual assault survivor. I have long felt like Bill Cosby needed to be held accountable. But I keep wondering if this is a system that can bring that accountability.

The [Bernie] Sanders campaign became the center of a good old-fashioned political controversy. His coverage went from no news to bad news with the revelation that four Sanders staffers took advantage of a software glitch to access confidential voter data belonging to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The land on which they (the Founding Fathers) formed this Union was stolen. The hands with which they built this nation were enslaved. The women who birthed the citizens of the nation are second class. This is the imperfect fabric of our nation, at times we’ve torn and stained it, and at other moments, we mend and repair it. But it’s ours, all of it. The imperialism, the genocide, the slavery, also the liberation and the hope and the deeply American belief that our best days still lie ahead of us.

Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.

So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

Many people consider darts a sport, with a live audience and very excited fans and competitors who aren`t hitting the bull`s-eye.

Look, I grew up in, went to school in, and now live in the American South, and southern white women are interesting, complex and quirky, even the ones with racial anxieties.

You are five times more likely to be killed by your abuser if your abuser can get their hands on a gun. That`s not a small problem.

Politics are a part of athletics now. Politics is a part of everything. And athletics is no exception.

Former Governor [Jeb] Bush calling for an end all together of the Supplemental Nutrition Program, or what some people call food stamps program, as part of an overhaul.

Undoubtedly, the biggest influence on my life is my mom, followed pretty closely by my dad.

I think the most critical needs of the African-American communities aren't being addressed primarily because of decisions being made by Republican Congressional leaders.

From 2001 to 2012 at least 6,410 women were murdered by an intimate partner using a gun. That`s more than the number of U.S. troops killed in action in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Bill Cosby was charged with sexual assault. No matter the outcome of this case this moment is an important public acknowledgement that even though many years have passed, there`s still the responsibility to take charges of sexual assault seriously.

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

With Donald Trump, you know, what I would tell you is that he`s got shelf life like I never would have guessed.

The removal of Bill Cosby from his cultural pedestal seems pretty complete.

A big part of the Republican 2016 race is now basically a bunch of establishment Republicans going after each other. Jeb Bush going after Marco Rubio, and the governors, Chris Christie going after Marco Rubio. Rubio firing back, John Kasich going after Jeb Bush.

Then President [Barack] Obama went on to argue that a citizen`s Second Amendment rights can be restricted without being infringed, just like any other rights. There are limits on your free speech and on your right to privacy. But he also made another nuanced Constitutional argument, that the rights enshrined in the Second Amendment must be balanced alongside the others rights guaranteed by the Constitution.