Ruby Dee Quotes

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I respect the fact that a director has studied the text and the road map of work before us, the subtleties, interconnections, underpinnings... His job is to paint the entire picture and knows all the colors that have to be in it.

I'm an actor who appreciates direction.

I think I have something unique that I'd like to share.

I'm very much interested in getting prisons off the stock market. I'm very much interested in upgrading the public school system... and taking a second look at capital punishment.

Is it safe and sane to only have one political and economic system by which everyone in the world can live? Or can we explore and share? God never made one of anything.

I didn't have the kind of talent or personality that kept me dreaming about Hollywood. They don't hire little colored girls to do this or that. After I got that in my head, I took another direction.

Life can't die. It's a contradiction.

We don't realize how much racism has tainted our self-image as human beings.

You can't be all you are meant to be if you think you are better than others, and you can't be all you are meant to be if you think you are less than others, either.

I shined shoes; I did windows.

There is a place for people 65 and older that no other age group can fit. We have nothing to lose. Some of us have a couple pennies. We can go out now and really be revolutionaries.

I think you mustn't tell your body, you mustn't tell your soul, 'I'm going to retire.' You may be changing your life emphasis, but there's still things that you have in mind to do that now seems the right time to do.

I really don't believe in retiring as long as you can breathe.

I have always been against the gangster as hero.

Well, I didn't grow up with that word 'retirement' as part of my consciousness. I didn't grow up with professionals that retired. I thought retiring was when you are tired and go to bed.

My whole life is not defined by what Hollywood does.

An Oscar nomination? That would be a very satisfying thing, I'm sure. I would appreciate the thought. It would be like taking your hat off as an actor to all the people who walk through you.

I never remember, like, saying, 'Well, I'm going to belong - join the civil rights movement.'

You can only appreciate freedom when you find yourself in a position to fight for someone else's freedom and not worry about your own.

My experience for myself as a performer is not one of high expectations.

You should always be prepared to win. But as much as I tell myself that, I've accepted another kind of role. Racism undercuts expectation, something like that. I'm not saying that to excuse myself from anything, but I've lived all this time, and things don't happen.

I do remember the numbers runners, I do remember the poverty and bread lines. Harlem stays with you forever.

You're not supposed to go into business with the sole purpose of putting your neighbor out of business. This is not the United States of Corporate America.

I remember street corners and pickets and parades. That's what I got teethed on.

I learned that having great sensitivity is important. But being strong is just as important.

I didn't realize it until I was grown how necessary it is for good people to be tough.

A nation's youths shouldn't be sent off to die.

One reason I didn't trust my writing for so long was that I always considered myself a serious dramatic actor. But people would always laugh when I shared my writing with them. It took my husband to help me see that I really am part humorist.

I pray with my whole soul that the divide-and-conquerers among us will not triumph over us. We need each other in this world so desperately.

When I was young, I dreamt of being a starlet in Hollywood. But there comes a point in every African American's life when you realize the limitations, that you could only play maids or some little supporting role. Even Lena Horne couldn't get good parts.

Racism is a very insidious thing. It's dangerous to the psyche, to mind and body. It erodes the self-confidence. And I don't know how we get through it.

I don't think the arts would have been as meaningful to me if I hadn't grown up in Harlem.

African-Americans have a lot to teach the world.

Black History Month is fine, but we need more months of the year to celebrate all the people on this earth. After all, we're all creatures of the same God.

God has use for all the old people.

The nature of racism is that it grinds down the soul of the man more finely than it does the soul of the woman. When you want to conquer a people or subject it, you destroy the male component.

You have to learn how to be married. You have to learn to love somebody.

We are all a tiger with feelings. An elephant who never forgets. We are tiger, panther, monkey - we are all of these things, all of the life rhythms.

The economics of life is against the family.

It's getting increasingly difficult to be a dreamer under any circumstances.

Black filmmakers - I'm grateful for them.

The white actresses I have known have been allowed to do 10 times more than I shall ever do.

I don't remember, as a child, feeling a lack of anything.

Before I latched onto the concept of stereotypes, not once did I reckon with the fact that I would never be a 'Hollywood starlet.'

Marriage is more complex than we think.

Just staying together is not a real virtue, if you're not happy. Or you're being denied. Or one person is being squashed. Or you really don't love each other; you're just there out of habit. That doesn't work, no matter how many years you stay together.

I think the poets and musicians, they belong to everybody.

You hear people say, 'We take our Tennessee Williams very seriously. There is no laughter here.' It's full of humor! Not to laugh is a big, bad mistake!

'Commitment' is a marvelous word.

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.

The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.

OK, boss, I don't mind shuffling, but I won't scratch my head.

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.

I have this deep love for authors. I think that we don't do enough to encourage love of words and love of books.

I think all human beings have a godlike, divine power, only most of us don't tap into it.

The Divine Impulse - it's always safe to follow it. We've got to trust it and go wherever it takes us. Especially women.

We women have a great function to perform. The world needs us.

My constant battle is putting aside time wasters, and I have to watch out for procrastination. Staying on the path of something you're trying to create has much to do with having confidence in yourself and in your capacity to realize the things you want out of life.

Black women have to know the historical and everyday struggles of black men, and our men have to know the struggles of black women in America.

Oh, I'm impressed with Lorraine Hansberry. She was a genius at whose feet I could sit.

I'm proud of doing 'Long Day's Journey into Night,' for which I won an ACE award.

I don't know who I would be if I weren't this child from Harlem, this woman from Harlem. It's in me so deep.

I never thought about myself as an activist when we were coming along. I love the people I love. I didn't care whether they could be a Democrat, Republican, communist... anything but a racist.

I'd come from a background in New York of picketing and protesting.

My stepmother wanted to be an actress.

Marriage is really an exciting adventure.

It is so calming, marriage.

Marriage, like love, is an aspiration. It's a process.

Gangsters lived in the neighborhood. They weren't apart from it. Their relationships with people were both benevolent and scary.

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