Lorraine Hansberry Quotes & Sayings

I think that the glorious thing about the human race is that it does change the world
constantly. The world or 'life' may seem to more often overwhelm the human being's capacity for struggling against being overwhelmed which is remarkable and exhilarating. — Lorraine Hansberry

American straightforwardness is almost as disarming as Americans invariably think it is. — Lorraine Hansberry

[Beneatha Younger:] ... He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Chrisitan fellowship.
[excerpt from Act II, Scene 3] — Lorraine Hansberry

I am the first to say that ours is a complex and difficult country and some of our complexities are indeed grotesque. We who are Negro Americans can offer that last remark with unwavering insistence. It is, on the other hand, also a great nation with certain beautiful and indestructible traditions and potentials which can be seized by all of who possess imagination and love of man. There is, as a certain play suggests, a great deal to be fought in America - but, at the same time, there is so much which begs to be but re-affirmed and cherished with sweet defiance. — Lorraine Hansberry

I was born black and female. — Lorraine Hansberry

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

It's dangerous, son."
"What's dangerous?"
"When a man goes outside his house to look for peace. — Lorraine Hansberry

Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey! ... Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress ... — Lorraine Hansberry

You aimin' to go the full circle now? How long before I have to come get you up from the sidewalks? You got hurt and pain in you? Well, I used to know a man who knew how to live with his pain and make his hurt work for him. Your daddy died with dignity; there wasn't no bum in him. And he known some hurts in this life you ain't never even heard of! — Lorraine Hansberry

Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. — Lorraine Hansberry

There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. — Lorraine Hansberry

In my mother's house there is still God."
Act 1, Scene 1 ~ A Raisin in the Sun — Lorraine Hansberry

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

That's what being eccentric means
being natural. — Lorraine Hansberry

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

Mama
Mama
I want so many things ... I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy ... — Lorraine Hansberry

Take away the violence and who will hear the men of peace? — Lorraine Hansberry

How we gets to the place where we scared to talk softness to each other. — Lorraine Hansberry

Cause sometimes it's hard to let the future begin! — Lorraine Hansberry

Perhaps I will be a great man ... I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course — Lorraine Hansberry

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

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

MAMA (Quietly, woman to woman)
He finally come into his manhood today, didn't he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain ...
RUTH (Biting her lip, lest her own pride explode in front of Mama)
Yes, Lena. — Lorraine Hansberry

For above all, in behalf of an ailing world which sorely needs our defiance, may we, as Negroes or women, never accept the notion of - our place. — Lorraine Hansberry

I happen to believe that most people
and this is where I differ from many of my contemporaries, or at least as they express themselves
I think that virtually every human being is dramatically interesting. Not only is he dramatically interesting, he is a creature of stature whoever he is ... — Lorraine Hansberry

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

Beneatha: You didn't tell us what Alaiyo means ... for all I know, you might be calling me Little Idiot or something ...
...
Asagai: It means ... it means One for Whom Bread
Food
Is Not Enough. — Lorraine Hansberry

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

You're a nice-looking girl ... all over. That's all you need, honey, forget the atmosphere. — Lorraine Hansberry

Children see things very well sometimes - and idealists even better. — Lorraine Hansberry

I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world! — Lorraine Hansberry

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

Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When he's done good and made things easy for everybody? That ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest ... ... and he can't believe in himself because the world's whipped him so! — Lorraine Hansberry

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be - if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking - but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don't pass it up. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don't pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts.
Lorraine Hansberry speech, "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964. — Lorraine Hansberry

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

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

It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively. — Lorraine Hansberry

When a man knows that the abstraction ten exists - nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of eleven. — Lorraine Hansberry

Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest. — Lorraine Hansberry

[T]here is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture
in front of us
our own little mirage that we think is the future. — Lorraine Hansberry

Beneatha: Love him? There is nothing left to love.
Mama: There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. (Looking at her) Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. 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. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! 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

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

Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women — Lorraine Hansberry

I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!"
"Finish your eggs first. — Lorraine Hansberry

I wish to live beacause 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 and generations. — Lorraine Hansberry

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

Something always told me I wasn't no rich white woman. — Lorraine Hansberry

What you ain't never understood is that I ain't got nothing, don't own nothing, ain't never really wanted nothing that wasn't for you. There ain't nothing as precious to me ... There ain't nothing worth holding on to, money, dreams, nothing else
— Lorraine Hansberry

Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike. — Lorraine Hansberry

[I am] A fool who believes that death is waste and love is sweet and that the earth turns and men change every day and that rivers run and that people wanna be better than they are and that flowers smell good and that I hurt terribly today, and that hurt is desperation and desperation is - energy and energy can move things... — Lorraine Hansberry

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

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

I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy NOT to care ... the WHY of why we are here is an intrigue for adolescents; the HOW is what must command the living. Which is why I have lately become an insurgent again. — Lorraine Hansberry

DAMN MY EGGS! DAMN ALL THE EGGS THAT EVER WAS! -Wilson — Lorraine Hansberry

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

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

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

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