Josephine Baker Quotes

You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.

To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.

I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.

I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.

You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.

We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.

The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.

A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.

Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.

Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.

I believe in prayer. It's the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.

All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.

Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.

He was my cream, and I was his coffee - And when you poured us together, it was something.

Art is an elastic sort of love.

The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts.

I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.

We've got to show that blacks and whites are treated equally in the army. Otherwise, what's the point of waging war on Hitler?

What am I most ashamed of in my life? Not keeping my promise to my sister and being too scared of America to attend her funeral.

Since I personified the savage on the stage, I tried to be as civilized as possible in daily life.

I think they must mix blood, otherwise the human race is bound to degenerate. Mixing blood is marvelous. It makes strong and intelligent men. It takes away tired spirits.

The white imagination is sure something when it comes to blacks.

I have two loves: my country and Paris.

I spent 30 minutes each morning rubbing my body with half a lemon to lighten my skin.

I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.

God dislikes evil, and no happiness can be built on hate. Love one another as brothers.

I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.

Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun.

I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.

One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.

Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.

I love performing. I shall perform until the day I die.

Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?

I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.

The old Catholic parties hounded me with a Christian hatred from station to station, city to city, one stage to another.

The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling because when I was a little girl I remember the horror of the East St. Louis race riot.