Lorraine Hansberry famous quotes

A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men - and people in general.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Running #Loneliness #Being Alone

The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Inspiring #Happiness #Success

I wish to live beacause life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and--I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Beautiful #Wish #Generations

Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning-because that ain't the time at all...when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Children #Taken #Thinking

Mama--Mama--I want so many things... I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy...
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Crazy #Want #Mama

Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Children #Acceptance #Sometimes

I'm just tired of hearing about God all the time. What has He got to do with anything?... I'm not going to be immoral or commit crimes because I don't believe. I don't even think about that. I just get so tired of Him getting the credit for things the human race achieves through its own effort. Now, there simply is no God. There's only man. And it's he who makes miracles.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Believe #Tired #Men

Never be afraid to sit a while and think.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Love #Inspiring #Dream

...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Children #Struggle #Mean

[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

#Thinking #Circles #Mirages

One cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know and read of the miseries which affect the world.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Heart #Eye #Feelings

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

#Ignorance #Roots #Feminist

I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Stupidity #Triumph #Finals

Once upon a time freedom used to be life-now it's money. I guess the world really do change.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Once Upon A Time #World #Used

Big Walter used to say, he'd get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, 'Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.'
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Dream #Children #Eye

Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Groups #Oppressed

Do 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.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Struggle #Giving #Doubt

That's what being eccentric means--being natural.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Mean #Eccentric #Natural

Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Pieces #Protest

A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Forever #Way #Revolution

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

#Dream #Children #Men

It's dangerous, son.' 'What's dangerous?' 'When a man goes outside his house to look for peace.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Son #Men #House

I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!" "Finish your eggs first.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Eggs #Want #Firsts

It isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Dream #Giving Up #Circles

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

#Mean #Calling #Littles

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

#Dream #Holding On #Wanted

There is always something left to love. And if you haven't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Love #Inspirational #Love You

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

#Justice #Mind #Monsters

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

#Struggle #Thinking #Race

I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Stars #Destiny #Thinking

American straightforwardness is almost as disarming as Americans invariably think it is.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Thinking #Disarming

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

#Believe #Thinking #People

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

#Believe #Writing #Thinking

Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey! ... Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress ...
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Moving #Journey #Preparation

Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Writing #Age #Balls

Sometimes, I can see the future stretched out in front of me - just as plain as day. The future hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Future #Waiting #Sometimes

I was born black and female.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#African American #Black #Female

I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Caring #Energy #Care

Take away the violence and who will hear the men of peace?
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Men #Violence #He Man

One for whom bread- food- is not enough.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Bread #Enough

I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Beautiful #Wish

Everybody talking 'bout heaven ain't going there!
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Talking #Heaven

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

#Black #Young #Gifted

When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven.
-- Lorraine Hansberry

#Men #Curiosity #Earth

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

#Women #Brain #Intelligence