- B -
- A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive.
--Pearl Bailey, 1971
- People see God every day, they just don't recognize him.
--Pearl Bailey, 1967
- When you're young, the silliest notions seem the greatest achievements.
--Pearl Bailey, 1968
- There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you if you don't repeat it.
--Pearl Bailey, 1993
- You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.
--Anita Baker
- Applause felt like approval, and it became a drug that soothed the pain, but only temporarily.
--Anita Baker
- At home I'm relaxed. I may be in the yard talking to neighbors, or riding my bike, or fishing, making up the bed-and things just come to me. I'll hum a melody, and if it feels real good, I'll play it on the piano and put it on tape, and then develop it later. The music speaks words to me.
--Anita Baker
- Long tresses down to the floor can be beautiful, if you have that, but learn to love what you have.
--Anita Baker
- The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.
--Josephine Baker, 1940
- A violinist had a violin, a painer his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.
--Josephine Baker
- I believe in prayer. It's the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.
--Josephine Baker
- Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
--James Baldwin, 1955
- Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
--James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 1955
- I imagine that one of the reasons that people cling to their hates so stubbornly is becaue they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with the pain.
--James Baldwin, 1955
- I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
--James Baldwin, 1955
- The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
--James Baldwin, 1961
- There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
--James Baldwin, 1961
- People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
--James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, 1961
- The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
--James Baldwin, 1961
- No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.
--James Baldwin
- To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.
--James Baldwin, 1962
- The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
--James Baldwin, 1962
- The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
--James Baldwin, 1962
- Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
--James Baldwin, 1962
- One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.
--James Baldwin, 1962
- The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power--and no one holds power forever.
--James Baldwin, 1962
- I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
--James Baldwin, 1984
- When I used to live in the Brewster Projects, I always thought it would be fantastic to have a phone. I would dream about a phone.
--Florence Ballard, 1966
- If I weren't earning more than $3 million a year to dunk a basketball, most people on the street would run in the other direction if they saw me coming.
--Charles Barkley, 1993
- I don't care what people think. people are stupid.
--Charles Barkley
- Kids are great. That's one of the best things about our business, all the kids you get to meet. It's a shame they have to grow up to be regular people and come to the games and call you names.
--Charles Barkley, 1993
- I don't think of myself as giving interviews. I just have conversations. That gets me in trouble.
--Charles Barkley
- I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.
--Charles Barkley
- I'm not a role model. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids.
--Charles Barkley
- Poor people cannot rely on the government to come to help you in times of need. You have to get your education. Then nobody can control your destiny.
--Charles Barkley
- These are my new shoes. They're good shoes. They won't make you rich like me, they won't make you rebound like me, they definitely won't make you handsome like me. They'll only make you have shoes like me. That's it.
--Charles Barkley
- Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.
--Count Basie
- It appears that my worst fears have been realized: we have made progress in everything yet nothing has changed.
--Derrick Bell, 1987
- Beauty is not just physical.
--Halle Berry
- I know that I will never find my father in any other man who comes into my life, because it is a void in my life that can only be filled by him.
--Halle Berry
- It is very hard to separate one's self from a character. Sometimes the people closest to me have to be very understanding.
--Halle Berry
- The man for me is the cherry on the pie. But I'm the pie, and my pie is good all by itself. Even if I don't have a cherry.
--Halle Berry
- The times may have changed, but the people are still the same. We're still looking for love, and that will always be our struggle as human beings.
--Halle Berry
- When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there's no way you could be a good winner.
--Halle Berry
- You have to get the audience invested even if you're doing something that they think is dumb, it's kind of what these movies are all about.
--Halle Berry
- We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.
--Mary MacLeod Bethune, 1955
- Knowledge is the prime need of the hour
--Mary Macleod Bethune, 1955
- I don't have any bad habbits. They might be bad habits for other people, but they're all right for me.
--Eubie Blake, 1979
- If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
--Eubie Blake, 1980
- The people in your life are important. Meaningful relationships with those people are very important.
--Ed Bradley
- Be prepared, work hard, and hope for a little luck. Recognize that the harder you work and the better prepared you are, the more luck you might have.
--Ed Bradley
- I had had no training as a journalist and I used to listen to the CBS News hourly reports. That was my classroom.
--Ed Bradley
- I will not go into a story unprepared. I will do my homework, and that's something I learned at an early age.
--Ed Bradley
- Art hurts. Art urges voyages--and it is easier to stay at home.
--Gwendolyn Brooks
- A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.
--Gwendolyn Brooks
- Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?
--Gwendolyn Brooks
- Poetry is life distilled.
--Gwendolyn Brooks
- Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.
--Gwendolyn Brooks
- When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.
--Gwendolyn Brooks
- Despite everything that Harlem did to our generation, I think it gave something to a few. It gave them a strength that couldn't be obtained anywhere else.
--Claude Brown, 1965
- Sometimes you struggle so hard to feed your family one way, you forget to feed them the other way, with spiritual nourishment. Everybody needs that.
--James Brown, 1986
- When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.
--James Brown, 1986
- Propaganda, however legitimate, can speak no louder than the truth.
--Sterling Brown, 1930
- Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.
--William Wells Brown, 1849
- We, as individuals, are fast losing our reputation for honest dealing. Our nation is losing its character. The loss of a firm national character, or the degredation of a nation's honour, is the inevitable prelude to her destruction.
--William Wells Brown, 1849
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