Quotes from Dorothy Height

I am the product of many whose lives have touched mine, from the famous, distinguished, and powerful to the little known and the poor.

My mother helped me understand how not to show off what I knew, but how to use it so that others might benefit.

even if you are a token, you have an important function to fulfill.

We cannot afford to be separate. . . . We have to see that all of us are in the same boat.

We are not a problem people, we are people with problems.

You never teach a subject, you always teach a child. You teach children in a way that they will learn, and then things will fall in place for them.

If I take a finger and touch you, you won't even know you've been tapped. If I take two fingers, you will know that something touched you. But if I bring all of those fingers together in a fist, I can give you a terrible blow!

All you need to do is organize your butterflies.

My mother helped me understand how not to show off what I knew, but how to use it so that others might benefit.

Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.

No one will do for you what you need to do for yourself. We cannot afford to be separate. We have to see that all of us are in the same boat.

There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights.

If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.

We have to realize we are building a movement.

Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together.

Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.

We have to improve life, not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system. But also for and with those who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity.

When you're a black woman, you seldom get to do what you just want to do; you always do what you have to do.

A Negro woman has the same kind of problems as other women, but she can't take the same things for granted.

The black woman had had to struggle against being a person of great strength.

We had people of all backgrounds coming together - all races, all creeds, all colors, all status in life. And coming together there was a kind of quiet dignity and a kind of sense of caring and a feeling of joint responsibility.

We've got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not, no one else is going to do it.

If you worry about who is going to get credit, you don't get much work done.

There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. Dr. King did not stir us to move for our civil rights to have them taken away in these kinds of fashions.