Quotes from James Weldon Johnson

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.

As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.

The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.

Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst.

With his head in his hands, God thought and thought, Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.

Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.

O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.

When one has seen something of the world and human nature, one must conclude, after all, that between people in like stations of life there is very little difference the world over.

And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world.

This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image.

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.

Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.

And God stepped out on space,And He looked around and said,"I'm lonely—I'll make me a world."

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

Find Sister Caroline…And she's tired—She's weary—Go down, Death, and bring her to me.

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.

I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.

The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.

The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

Your arm's too short to box with God.