African Woman Quotes

#1. She was not a white woman. She was not a Greek ... Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color.

John Henrik Clarke

#2. The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

Buchi Emecheta

#3. I would love to take a cooking class from Gandhi. Maybe I could teach him how to cook, and he could teach me his message. I wouldn't mind learning how to make couscous from scratch from a North African woman, either.

Marcus Samuelsson

#4. It was easy for me to be ridiculed and for both men and women to perceive that maybe I'm a bit crazy because I'm educated in the West and I have lost some of my basic decency as an African woman.

Wangari Maathai

#5. Because I was a woman, I was vulnerable. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman.'

Wangari Maathai

#6. I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

Lynn Nottage

#7. My mom was the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School, in 1946. She had leadership roles in the law, in government and the corporate world. She was a great role model in that she felt anything was possible.

John W. Rogers Jr.

#8. There are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job.

Johnnetta B. Cole

#9. I love "Phenomenal Woman." The experiences she had of being African American in the U.S. - that itself is a task. I appreciate the hardships Maya Angelou went through for our generation. I'm super influenced by the black people that paved the way for us.

Serena Williams

#10. It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable.

Issa Rae

#11. She was tall and dark-skinned and looked like a Nigerian sculpture. She moved like a lioness, her every step bristling with suppressed violence.

Bonnie Greer

#12. I personally am tired of being a subject of study and rescue. A subject that is not imagined upon to have their own thought patterns.

Malebo Sephodi

#13. I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama!

Kerry Washington

#14. To reaffirm the statement on the choosing of my identity, I come from two beautiful cultures which I have embraced, bridged, balanced, and identify with. I am proud to be who I am as a Dine' (Navajo) and Nahilii (African American) woman. Hozho', , & blessings

Radmilla Cody

#15. Mostly I'm proud to be an African-American woman, but I'm glad I have a universal look as well.

Chanel Iman

#16. You're an incredible woman, Lela. I would battle a thousand Terrademons to reach your heart. But I cannot challenge or defeat an enemy that's already dead. I cannot fight for a heart that doesn't want to be won.

N.D. Jones

#17. I am a colored woman or a Negro woman. Either one is OK. People dislike those words now. Today these use this term African American. It wouldn't occur to me to use that. I prefer to think of myself as an American, that's all!

Annie Elizabeth Delany

#18. There's good reason to be excited. You have the first woman running who is qualified, and a very attractive African-American who has demonstrated crossover appeal. I got involved in politics 40 years ago during the civil rights movement, so yes, it's an exciting thing.

Joe Biden

#19. I don't live my life as a writer. I'm a mother, an African-American woman, and I do everything that everybody else does - cook and a little bit of cleaning.

Terry McMillan

#20. It would be impossible to think it's just about sex with a woman like you. You demand more without even trying. I'm set on giving you more. Sex is only an introduction- Amon Mikende

AlTonya Washington

#21. I remember reading article about the woman in that Oakland neighborhood who lost all her children to violence. I wondered why'd she keep living there after the first one was killed. Didn't she care about the others?
Today, I zoomed out and wondered why I'm still in America.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#22. (Female African clawed frogs, when injected with the urine of a pregnant woman, lay eggs within a few hours.)

Elizabeth Kolbert

#23. In other words, Texans lynched one person a month for thirty years, and almost 80 percent of the time the man or woman hanging on the end of a rope or smoldering in the remains of a fire was African American.

E.R. Bills

#24. And though this encounter took place against an African sky, our brief enchantment symbolized the new world's greatest taboo - the hand of a very black man caressing the face of the blackest woman, with no shred of light entering into it, utter darkness alone representing God (71).

Kola Boof

#25. To misbehave us to denounce the social norms that limit individuals based on who they are. That to make history is to upset patriarchy, a system that is intent on controlling and marginalising others.

Malebo Sephodi

#26. We have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don't embrace homosexuality. We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality.

Robert Mugabe

#27. It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.

Zora Neale Hurston

#28. I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave; even today, inside me, here, and here, I am still a free woman.

Manu Herbstein

#29. My plays aren't stylistically the same. Just being an African-American woman playwright on Broadway is experimental.

Suzan-Lori Parks

#30. The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. Women in this country must become revolutionaries." - Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress

Jessica Bennett

#31. I don't strive on being the most beautiful woman in the room! I strive to be the most unique! The one who stands out, the one you will never forget.

Sahndra Fon Dufe

#32. I'm African American, I'm a lot of other things, a musician and an artist. But that woman part holds the most pain for me. And therefore, obviously, the most lessons.

India.Arie

#33. But at the same time you can't ...

Angela Davis

#34. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterward. It's the hardest to be a woman.

Julie Delpy

#35. Myself, I happen to be married to an African-American woman, and we're together 17 years. We took a few trips to the South 15 years ago, and we were sobered by some of the reactions people had - how subtle or not-so-subtle their reactions were.

Tom Verica

#36. Any woman with kinky textured hair - can wear it, love it and manage it. She only needs the right tools, inspiration and motivation.

Monica Millner

#37. This book is dedicated to every woman who has ever felt self-conscious about her size. Outer beauty comes in all sizes, shapes, heights, ages, and colors. And inner beauty will always shine through, no matter what the packaging.

Raynetta Manees

#38. If you're colored, you get the short end of the stick. If you're a woman, you get the short end of the stick. So what do we get for being colored and women?

Sherri L. Smith

#39. Because books saved my life, literally, I've become close to them

Malebo Sephodi

#40. I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman ... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.

Trevor Noah

#41. I think most people write from what they see in their own world, which is maybe why we so often see an African-American woman as the best friend, or the one you bring in when you need some sass. It's like we're put in a box.

Tika Sumpter

#42. You know what the lowest rated episode we ever had was? Where Captain Kirk kissed Uhuru - a white man kissing an African-American woman. All the stations in the American South - in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana - refused to air it. And so our ratings plummeted.

George Takei

#43. I would love to get a role that changes the landscape of being an African American woman in television and film.

Candice Patton

#44. I was the first African-American woman to play Maggie in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' It was at the Virginia State Theatre, and we turned Richmond upside down.

Tamara Tunie