Lorraine Hansberry Quotes

Quotes about:

• Though it be a thrilling and marvellous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so - doubly dynamic - to be young, gifted and black.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Black, Young, Gifted

  Negro Digest, Aug. 1964

  82 Copy quote

• Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Love, Inspiring, Dream

  Lorraine Hansberry (2011). “A Raisin in the Sun”, p.119, Vintage

  54 Copy quote

• I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Caring, Energy, Care

  Lorraine Hansberry (2012). “The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window”, p.9, Vintage

  55 Copy quote

• One cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know and read of the miseries which affect the world.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Heart, Eye, Feelings

  83 Copy quote

• There is always something left to love. And if you haven't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Love, Inspirational, Raisins

  75 Copy quote

• ...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Children, Struggle, Mean

  80 Copy quote

• I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Believe, Writing, Thinking

  Lorraine Hansberry (2012). “Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays: The Drinking Gourd/What Use Are Flowers?”, p.6, Vintage

  57 Copy quote

• A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men - and people in general.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Running, Loneliness, Being Alone

  "Wild Women Talk Back : Audacious Advice for the Bedroom, Boardroom, and Beyond". Book by Autumn Stephens (p. 15), 2004.

  97 Copy quote

• The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Happiness, Inspiring, Success

  "To Be Young, Gifted and Black : Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words" by Lorraine Hansberry, (p. 137), 1969.

  78 Copy quote

• I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Beautiful, Wish

  Lorraine Hansberry (1994). “The Collected Last Plays”, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and - I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Beautiful, Wish, Generations

  "To Be Young, Gifted and Black : Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words" by Lorraine Hansberry, (p. 100), 1969.

  64 Copy quote

• I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Stars, Destiny, Thinking

  Lorraine Hansberry (2012). “Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays: The Drinking Gourd/What Use Are Flowers?”, p.225, Vintage

  34 Copy quote

• This is one of the glories of man, the inventiveness of the human mind and the human spirit: whenever life doesn't seem to give an answer, we create one.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Men, Giving, Mind

  39 Copy quote

• Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Groups, Oppressed

  11 Copy quote

• The grim possibility is that she who 'hides her brains' will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with 'hidden brains' or none at all.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Women, Brain, Intelligence

  38 Copy quote

• Sometimes, I can see the future stretched out in front of me - just as plain as day. The future hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Future, Waiting, Sometimes

  Lorraine Hansberry (2011). “A Raisin in the Sun”, p.65, Vintage

  27 Copy quote

• Once upon a time freedom used to be life-now it's money. I guess the world really do change.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Once Upon A Time, World, Used

  Lorraine Hansberry (2011). “A Raisin in the Sun”, p.65, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Dream, Children, Men

  34 Copy quote

• A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Forever, Agitation, Groups

  38 Copy quote

• Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all... When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Children, Taken, Thinking

  "A Raisin in the Sun". Play by Lorraine Hansberry, 1959.

  69 Copy quote

• Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually -- without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts? This is what I puzzle about.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Struggle, Giving, Doubt

  48 Copy quote

• There may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Ignorance, Roots, Feminist

  41 Copy quote

• That's what being eccentric means--being natural.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Mean, Eccentric, Natural

  Lorraine Hansberry (1987). “A Raisin in the Sun: And The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window”, Plume

  9 Copy quote

• It isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Dream, Giving Up, Circles

  Lorraine Hansberry (2011). “A Raisin in the Sun”, p.116, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• I'm just tired of hearing about God all the time. What has He got to do with anything?... I'm not going to be immoral or commit crimes because I don't believe. I don't even think about that. I just get so tired of Him getting the credit for things the human race achieves through its own effort. Now, there simply is no God. There's only man. And it's he who makes miracles.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Believe, Tired, Men

  42 Copy quote

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