Quotes from Ruby Dee

You can't be all you are meant to be if you think you are better than others, and you can't be all you are meant to be if you think you are less than others, either.

I remember street corners and pickets and parades. That's what I got teethed on.

I learned that having great sensitivity is important. But being strong is just as important.

A nation's youths shouldn't be sent off to die.

There is a place for people 65 and older that no other age group can fit. We have nothing to lose. Some of us have a couple pennies. We can go out now and really be revolutionaries.

My experience for myself as a performer is not one of high expectations.

I really don't believe in retiring as long as you can breathe.

It is so calming, marriage.

Among whom the gods bless, high on the list are the music people, who tune into celestial vibe-brations and give mortals a taste of immortal sensations.

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.

I think the poets and musicians, they belong to everybody.

'Commitment' is a marvelous word.

Life can't die. It's a contradiction.

We don't realize how much racism has tainted our self-image as human beings.

I have this deep love for authors. I think that we don't do enough to encourage love of words and love of books.

My whole life is not defined by what Hollywood does.

I never thought about myself as an activist when we were coming along. I love the people I love. I didn't care whether they could be a Democrat, Republican, communist... anything but a racist.

The nature of racism is that it grinds down the soul of the man more finely than it does the soul of the woman. When you want to conquer a people or subject it, you destroy the male component.

I think all human beings have a godlike, divine power, only most of us don't tap into it.

You meet all kinds of people that help put life in perspective and turn the horror into some kind of lesson or avenue of awakening that lives with you all your days.

The Divine Impulse - it's always safe to follow it. We've got to trust it and go wherever it takes us. Especially women.

Is it safe and sane to only have one political and economic system by which everyone in the world can live? Or can we explore and share? God never made one of anything.

Well, I didn't grow up with that word 'retirement' as part of my consciousness. I didn't grow up with professionals that retired. I thought retiring was when you are tired and go to bed.

I'd come from a background in New York of picketing and protesting.