A Quote by Countee Cullen

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.

Countee Cullen

Quote Topics

About Alone Always Could Demand Feeling Inclination Known Moment Most Natural Often People Request Savor Seemed Sing White

Quote Author

Countee Cullen
American - Novelist
May 30, 1903 - January 9, 1946

I always knew I had a voice and I've always known I could sing, but I was too shy to let it come out. I think it's the hardest thing to do, to sing in front of people. When I finally let go and did it, I realized it's what I'm most talented at and what I love to do the most.

Paris Hilton

The religious philosophy that they had adopted, in my opinion, was the only thing and is the only thing that can remove the white from the mind of the white man and the negro from the mind of the negro. I have seen what Islam has done with our people, our people who had this feeling of negro - and it had a psychological effect of putting them in a mental prison.

Malcolm X

It always seemed to me that white people were judged as individuals. But if a Negro did something stupid or wrong, it was held against all of us.

Annie Elizabeth Delany

Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?

Mahalia Jackson

Ant and Dec seemed a natural name for us - it was just how people referred to us, cos we were always together. I've never resented the fact that his name comes first.

Declan Donnelly

If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.

Sam Phillips

There has always been something about the biggest, the wealthiest, the best-known, the most prestigious that has appealed to me. It's always seemed to me that that is what people want to know about.

Robin Leach

It's true that the level of scientific knowledge among adults is very low, but that's not because there isn't a natural interest. I think most kids are fascinated by the natural world. I've often said that if you could quantify the mental power involved in all the dinosaur names correctly known and correctly spelled by 5-year-old kids in America, you could move any mountain on earth.

Stephen Jay Gould

I look back, now, and I know that the naming moment, which seemed so insignificant then, which seemed to demand no more than an arbitrary and superstitious yes or no, was in fact a pivotal moment in my life.

Gregory David Roberts

I think that I write much more naturally about characters in solitude than characters interacting with others. My natural inclination - and one that I've learned to push against - is to give primacy to a character's interior world. Over the three books that I've written, I've had to teach myself that not every feeling needs to be described and that often the most impactful writing more elegantly evokes those unnamed feelings through the way characters speak and behave.

Stefan Merrill Block

I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals.

Norman Finkelstein

A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.

Malcolm X

In the early days of my carer as an actor, I shared what was then the prevailing attitude of Negro performers :;that the content and form of a play or a film scenario was of little importance to us. What mattered was was the opportunity, which came so seldom to our folks ... Later I came to understand that the Negro artist could not view the matter simply in terms of of his individual interests, and that he had a responsibility to his people who rightfully resented the traditional stereotyped portrayals of Negros on stage and screen.

Paul Robeson

Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.

E. B. White

I think, often, people who run away are people who got into things most enthusiastically, and then they want more. They just demand more of life than what is happening in the moment. Sometimes this is a great mistake, as it's always a good deal different than you expect it.