The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man Quotes

“Can you imagine," he went on to say, "what would have been the condition of things eventually if there had been no war, and the South had been allowed to follow its course? Instead of one great, prosperous country with nothing before it but the conquests of peace, a score of petty republics, as in Central and South America, wasting their energies in war with each other pr om revolutions.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“I had made my mind up that since I was not going to be a Negro, I would avail myself of every possible opportunity to make a white man's success; and that, if it can be summed up in any one word, means "money.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“It is a struggle; for though the white man of the South may be too proud to admit it, he is, nevertheless, using in the contest his best energies; he is devoting to it the greater part of his thought and much of his endeavor.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“We hit slavery through a great civil war. Did we destroy it? No, we only changed it into hatred between sections of the country: in the South, into political corruption and chicanery, the degradation of the blacks through peonage, unjust laws, unfair and cruel treatment; and the degradation of the whites by their resorting to these practices, the paralyzation of the public conscience, and the ever over-hanging dread of what the future may bring.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“I have since learned that this ability to laugh heartily is, in part, the salvation of the American Negro; it does much to keep him from going the way of the Indian.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“...evil is a force and, like the physical and chemical forces, we cannot annihilate it; we may only change its form. We light upon one evil and hit it with all the might of our civilization, but only succeed in scattering it into a dozen of other forms”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“Can you imagine," he went on to say, "what would have been the condition of things eventually if there had been no war, and the South had been allowed to follow its course? Instead of one great, prosperous country with nothing before it but the conquests of peace, a score of petty republics, as in Central and South America, wasting their energies in war with each other pr om revolutions.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“As I grew older, my love for reading grew stronger. I read with studious interest everything I could find relating to colored men who had gained prominence. My heroes had been King David, then Robert the Bruce; now Frederick Douglass was enshrined in the place of honor.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“But the more she talked, the less was I reassured, and I stopped her by asking: "Well, mother, am I white? Are you white?" She answered tremblingly: "No, I am not white, but you—your father is one of the greatest men in the country—the best blood of the South is in you—" This suddenly opened up in my heart a fresh chasm of misgiving and fear,”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“It's no disgrace to be black, but it's often very inconvenient.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive. My heart turned bitter within me. I could understand why Negroes are led to sympathize with even their worst criminals and to protect them when possible.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“A space was quickly cleared in the crowd, and a rope placed about his neck, when from somewhere came the suggestion, "Burn him!" It ran like an electric current. Have you ever witnessed the transformation of human beings into savage beasts? Nothing can be more terrible.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“There were two immediate results of my forced loneliness: I began to find company in books, and greater pleasure in music.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“He convinced me that, after all, eloquence consists more in the manner of saying than in what is said. It is largely a matter of tone pictures.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“wish to say that when the colored people reach the monument-building stage, they should not forget the men and women who went South after the war and founded schools for them).”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“Did we destroy it? No, we only changed it into hatred between sections of the country: in the South, into political corruption and chicanery, the degradation of the blacks through peonage, unjust laws, unfair and cruel treatment; and the degradation of the whites by their resorting to these practices, the paralyzation of”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“This affectionate relation between the Southern whites and those blacks who come into close touch with them has not been overdrawn even in fiction.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“can imagine no more dissatisfied human being than an educated, cultured, and refined colored man in the United States.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“Let the millions of producing and consuming Negroes be taken out of the South, and it would be quickly seen how much less of public funds there would be to appropriate for education or any other purpose.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“In the life of everyone there is a limited number of unhappy experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“By mastering ragtime I gained several things: first of all, I gained the title of professor. I was known as "the professor”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“have come to my personal knowledge in which old Negroes have died and left what was a considerable fortune to the descendants of their former masters.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“did not know what some men never find out, that the woman who cannot discern when she is loved has never lived.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“I knew I could not speak, but I would have given a part of my life to touch her hand with mine and call her 'sister.' I sat through the opera until I could stand it no longer. I felt that I was suffocating. Valentine's love seemed like mockery, and I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise up and scream to the audience: 'Here, here in your very midst, is a tragedy, a real tragedy!”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“My philosophy of life is this: make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come into touch with yours; but to attempt to right the wrongs and ease the sufferings of the world in general, is a waste of effort. You had just as well try to bale the Atlantic by pouring the water into the Pacific.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“It is a difficult thing for a white man to learn what a colored man really thinks; because, generally, with the latter an additional and different light must be brought to bear on what he thinks; and his thoughts are often influenced by considerations so delicate and subtle that it would be impossible for him to confess or explain them to one of the opposite race. This gives to every colored man, in proportion to his intellectuality, a sort of dual personality; there is one phase of him which is disclosed only in the freemasonry of his own race. I have often watched with interest and sometimes with amazement even ignorant colored men under cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintain this dualism in the presence of white men. I”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each and every colored man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“I think I find a sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the little tragedies of my life, and turn them into a practical joke on society.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“By a complex, confusing, and almost contradictory mathematical process, by the use of zigzags instead of straight lines, the earth can be proved to be the center of things celestial; but by an operation so simple that it can be comprehended by a schoolboy, its position can be verified among the other worlds which revolve about the sun, and its movements harmonized with the laws of the universe. So, when the white race assumes as a hypothesis that it is the main object of creation and that all things else are merely subsidiary to its well-being, sophism, subterfuge, perversion of conscience, arrogance, injustice, oppression, cruelty, sacrifice of human blood, all are required to maintain the position, and its dealings with other races become indeed a problem, a problem which, if based on a hypothesis of common humanity, could be solved by the simple rules of justice.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man