25 Inspiring Quotes From Black Women To Celebrate Black History Month

“In a perfect dream, things would be set exactly the way you would want them. But I think it’s more interesting that in real life, things aren’t exactly the way you planned.” — Naomi Osaka

“I’m interested in the lives of Black folk as the subject. Not the predicate, not the tangent. [These stories] deserve to be told — not as sociology, not as spectacle, not as a singular event that happens every so often — but regularly and purposefully as truth and as art on an ongoing basis.” — Ava DuVernay

“I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I only have to follow my heart and concentrate on what I want to say to the world. I run my world.” — Beyoncé

“Keep going and keep speaking up, even if your voice shakes.” — Allyson Felix

“It’s important with all of the messages that might tell you otherwise that you have that in yourself to say, ‘I am beautiful. I am smart and I’m amazing.’” — Laverne Cox

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” — Ida B. Wells

“I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act. It is an act that can be met with hostility, exclusion, and violence. It can also lead to love, understanding, transcendence, and community." — Janet Mock, Redefining Realness: My Path To Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

"If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it." — Sojourner Truth

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." — Shirley Chisholm

"The path to your success is not as fixed and inflexible as you think." — Misty Copeland

"We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own 'to do' list." — Michelle Obama

"No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you." — Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

"Feminism involves so much more than gender equality and it involves so much more than gender. Feminism must involve consciousness of capitalism (I mean the feminism that I relate to, and there are multiple feminisms, right?). So it has to involve a consciousness of capitalism and racism and colonialism and post-colonialities, and ability and more genders than we can even imagine and more sexualities than we ever thought we could name." — Angela Davis

"Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation." — Coretta Scott King

"Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination." — Dr. Mae Jemison

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." — Dr. Maya Angelou

"I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.” — Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun And Be Your Own Person

"I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them." — Madam C.J. Walker

“There are two things I’ve got a right to, and these are, Death or Liberty — one or the other I mean to have. No one will take me back alive; I shall fight for my liberty, and when the time has come for me to go, the Lord will let them kill me." — Harriet Tubman

"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong." — Ella Fitzgerald

“I am passionate about everything in my life — first and foremost, passionate about ideas. And that's a dangerous person to be in this society, not just because I'm a woman, but because it's such a fundamentally anti-intellectual, anti-critical thinking society." — bell hooks, Reel To Real: Race, Sex, And Class At The Movies

“You can’t just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream. You’ve got to get out there and make it happen for yourself.” — Diana Ross

“I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” — Rosa Parks

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.” — Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I take self-love very seriously. And I take it seriously because when I was younger, I wanted to change everything about myself. I didn’t love who I was. And the reason I didn’t love who I was is because I was told I wasn’t lovable by the media, by [people at] school, by not seeing myself in beauty ads, by not seeing myself in television... by lack of representation. My self-hatred got so bad that I was fantasizing about being other people. But you can’t live your life trying to be somebody else. What’s the point?” — Lizzo