Johnnetta B. Cole Quotes

• An education that teaches you to understand something about the world has done only half of the assignment. The other half is to teach you to do something about making the world a better place.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Done, Half, World

  44 Copy quote

• The ultimate expression of generosity is not in giving of what you have, but in giving of who you are.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Inspirational, Expression, Generosity

  72 Copy quote

• Faced with what seems like an impossible task, a group of folks will do well to remember the African proverb: When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Ties, Groups, Tasks

  70 Copy quote

• What you give ought to be in direct relationship to what you've received. If you have been blessed with a great deal, then you have a lot of giving to do.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Blessed, Giving, Stewardship

  51 Copy quote

• While it is true that without a vision the people perish, it is doubly true that without action the people and their vision perish as well.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  People, Vision, Action

  Johnnetta B. Cole (2011). “Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President”, p.76, Anchor

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• You cannot fully understand your own life without knowing and thinking beyond your life, your own neighborhood, and even your own nation.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Thinking, Knowing, Path

  36 Copy quote

• The content of the curriculum should never exclude the realities of the very students who must intellectually wrestle with it. When students study all worlds except their own, they are miseducated.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Education, Reality, World

  Johnnetta B. Cole (2011). “Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President”, p.169, Anchor

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• Show me someone content with mediocrity and I'll show you someone destined for failure.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Inspirational, Failure, Mediocrity

  30 Copy quote

• The more we pull together toward a new day, the less it matters what pushed us apart in the past.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Past, New Day, Together

  9 Copy quote

• the trouble with a woman standing behind her man is that she can't see where she is going!

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Men, Trouble, Behinds

  Johnnetta B. Cole (2011). “Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President”, p.104, Anchor

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• If folks can learn to be racist, then they can learn to be anti racist. If being sexist ain't genetic, then, dad gum, people can learn about gender equality.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Dad, People, Racist

  25 Copy quote

• There are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Education, Jobs, College

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• The woman who bore me is no longer alive, but I seem to be her daughter in increasingly profound ways.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Mother Daughter, Honesty, Mother And Daughter

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• Now, if you want to know my secret love, it is to be able to serve as an example.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Secret Love, Example, Want

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• racism is alive and doing too well in America.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  America, Racism, Alive

  Johnnetta B. Cole (2011). “Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President”, p.58, Anchor

  18 Copy quote

• The histories of the poor and the powerless are as important as those of their conquerors, their colonizers, their kings and queens.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Family, Kings, Queens

  Johnnetta B. Cole (2011). “Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President”, p.161, Anchor

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• Crisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Racism, People, Community

  9 Copy quote

• The myth of black women profiting at the expense of black men is the oldest rap around.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Rap, Men, Black

  9 Copy quote

• I grew up in the South. I grew up in the days of legalized segregation. And, so, whether you called it legal racial segregation or you called it apartheid, it was the same injustice.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Injustice, Segregation, Grew

  "American scholar recalls honoring Nelson Mandela with a quilt of connection". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. December 9, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

• if we center our lives on BMWs, RVs, VCRs, PCs and the other acronyms of consumerism, we cannot expect our children to do otherwise.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Children, Rvs, Bmw

  Johnnetta B. Cole (2011). “Conversations: Straight Talk with America's Sister President”, p.9, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

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