Quotes & Sayings About Black And White Thinking

I believe I live in a black and white. I think things are like either black or white. I don't really believe that much in the gray. I think that there's gray for a lot of people, but I don't live in the gray. I realize whatever action I have or take, it's going to have a consequence
either good or bad. So I live my life in a way where I don't have bad consequences. I just notice there's a lot people around me just live in the gray. I don't know, for me, I'm just really straightforward. — Venus Williams

The way that house music has become so white and so sanitized over the decades and the fact it's still going on, well I think it's sad really, but at the time I really loved it. I loved all the black house music that was coming out of Chicago and New Jersey, which I just thought was really soulful. — Paul Weller

When your characters are not white hats or black hats but something in between, you do have to be very careful about your details. So, that takes a while. I'm not interested in white hats and black hats. I don't think that's how people are in real life. — Victor Levin

Holy cow," Chloe said faintly.
"No kidding," Gwen breathed.
The sexy Fae prince flashed them a smile that was pure devilish charm, sexy and playful and mischievous, briefly catching the tip of his tongue between white teeth, before his lip curved, dark eyes sparkling gold.
Gabby groaned. She choked on it hastily, camouflaging it with a dry little cough. Her own private stash of eye candy had just been made available for public consumption and she didn't like it one bit.
Apparently she wasn't the only one.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Dageus?" Drustan said irritably.
"Och, aye," Dageus said darkly. "You liked him better invisible too?"
"Och, aye."
"Should I curse him again?"
"Och, aye."
Adam threw back his head and laughed, eyes sparkling with gold fire. "Bloody hell, it's good to be back," he purred. — Karen Marie Moning

All too frequently in the women's movement it was assumed one could be free of sexist thinking by simply adopting the appropriate feminist rhetoric; it was further assumed that identifying oneself as oppressed freed one from being an oppressor. To a very grave extent such thinking prevented white feminists from understanding and overcoming their own sexist-racist attitudes toward black women. They could pay lip-service to the idea of sisterhood and solidarity between women but at the same time dismiss black women. Just — Bell Hooks

The world does not have a voice of its own. It can't tell you what it wants, what it needs. But it's yearning for something to point it in the right direction. A savior, perhaps. Save us, Chris! You must forgive me. Where have my manners gone. I don't think I've had a chance to formerly introduce myself. You may call me Bray Wyatt. But I have a thousand faces and a million names. Seducer, accuser, destroyer. I am the color red in a world full of black and white, and if you value your ability to breathe, don't get too close. Save us, Chris. Save yourself. — Bray Wyatt

I stop and think what they call 'punk rock' today ... give me a break! Let me know when they can walk in the vapor trail of Little Richard, which was punk. You've got a gay black guy with a pompadour singing about tutti frutti with your white girl? F-k you! — Ted Nugent

I don't mean to sugarcoat the figure on restatements, but I think it is positive - it shows a healthy system. The general impression of the public is that accounting rules are black and white. They are often anything but that, and in many instances the changes in earnings came after new interpretations by the chief accountant of the SEC. — Steve Odland

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything
God and our friends and ourselves included
as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred. — C.S. Lewis

I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance'! White people seem to think the black ought to be shouting 'hallelujah'! Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back - and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar! — Malcolm X

Black and white is much closer to the condition of
dreaming. It links you to the subconscious and I think that was
part of the great appeal of movies originally.. this strange otherness. — John Boorman

I think the play offers (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans For instance, in 'Fences' they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things- love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives. — August Wilson

Black, white, yellow, brown - we wanted somebody who would do right by us. And I think because Obama was that person, whether he was black or white, he was chosen — Will Ferrell

The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white ... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends. — Edward Weston

I feel like the world we live in seems to be full of an increasingly grey area, but the culture that we live in seems to be getting really entrenched in black and white positions, and I think it's urgent to talk about that because it's going to kill us all. — Paul Bettany

But at the time I didn't know that it would take more to escape black-and-white thinking than just no longer attending your parents' church. The church had provided me a sorting system, which was now ingrained. It had containers into which every person and idea and event was to be placed. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

I tell sincere white people, 'Work in conjunction with us- each of us working among our own kind.' Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do- and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist. Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people!
We will completely respect our white co-workers. They will deserve every credit. We will give them every credit. We will meanwhile be working among our own kind, in our own black communities- showing and teaching black men in ways that only other black men can- that the black man has got to help himself. Working separately, the sincere white people and sincere black people actually will be working together.
In our mutual sincerity we might be able to show a road to the salvation of America's very soul. — Malcolm X

Black progressives suffered major disillusionment with white progressives when our experiences of working with them revealed that they could want to be with us (even to be our sexual partners) without divesting of white supremacist thinking about blackness. We saw that they were often unable to let go the idea that whites are somehow better, smarter, more likely to be intellectuals, and even that they were kinder than black folks. — Bell Hooks

When I think back, I felt like I had the life that a lot of white American kids grew up with in the suburbs in the States. I started noticing, as Apartheid's grip weakened, that we had more and more black kids at school; I had more and more black friends. But I never really saw a separation between myself and the black kids at school. — St. Lucia

In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience. — June Jordan

There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin, for example."
"And what do they think? Against it, are they?"
"It is not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray."
"Nope."
"Pardon?"
There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
"It's a lot more complicated than that
"
"No it ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."
"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes-"
"But they Starts with thinking about people as things ... — Terry Pratchett

I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets. — Darius McCrary

I believe that God is like a powerhouse, like where you keep electricity, like a power station. And that he's a supreme power, and that he's neither good not bad, left, right, black or white. He just is. And we tap that source of power and make of it what we will. Just as electricity can kill people in a chair, or you can light a room with it. I think God is. — John Lennon

In some ways I consider myself more Chinese, because I live in San Francisco, which is becoming a predominantly Asian city. I avoid falling into the black-and-white dialectic in which most of America still seems trapped. I have always recognized that, as an American, I am in relationship with other parts of the world; that I have to measure myself against the Pacific, against Asia. Having to think of myself in relationship to that horizon has liberated me from the black-and-white checkerboard. — Richard Rodriguez

A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. I think sometimes a black may think they don't have an advantage or this and that ... I've said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage. — Donald Trump

I know when the anthrax thing hit - white people, y'all was very nervous. Y'all would come up to me at work and warn me, like 'Oh my God, Aries, be careful. Don't open your mail.' Let me tell you something - black folks was never worried about anthrax because, half the time, we don't open our mail no way. We might think that's a bill. We might hold it to the light and go, 'That's a red slip.' If you want to get us with anthrax, put that in a Jay-Z CD. That's how you get us. — Aries Spears

It is well known that women carry poison in their pockets. Did you expect a gun? A woman with a gun would be just another policeman. We fall in love with the convicts, remember that. Policemen marry girls from the neighborhood, high school looms over their unions, the first uniform is her prom dress and his black bow tie and white shirt. But the girls are thinking of poison, thinking of poison as the lights go out on the dresser where the revolver has been placed with care for the night. The black shoes, the fine, thick serge of the coat, shoulders and thighs of stallions. And the policemen are usually shot down by someone out of shape, thin, thin, nothing but living bones. Remember that. — Elizabeth Hardwick

This wonderful gray of acceptance resides between the extremes of black and white thinking; looking for serenity, explore the gray. Part of that acceptance is understanding that life is hard and involves life and death. Part of that acceptance is that I am responsible for my actions. — David W. Earle

"I think you're begging the question," said Haydock, "and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!" — Agatha Christie

Black and white thinking limits understanding and feedback, two necessary ingredients for successful resolution in creative conflict and successful understanding. — David W. Earle

The novel had a framework made by thinking. The thought was that to divide off and compartmentalize living was dangerous and led to nothing but trouble. Old, young; black, white; men, women; capitalism, socialism; these dichotomies undo us, force us into unreal categorisation, make us look for what separates us rather than what we have in common. That was the thought, which made the shape or pattern of 'The Golden Notebook'. But the emotions were stronger than the thought. This is why I have always seen TGN as a failure: a failure in my terms, of what I had meant. For has this book changed by an iota our tendency to think like computers set to sort everything - people, ideas, history - into boxes? No, it has not. Yet why should I have such a hubristic thought? But I was in the grip of discovery, of revelation. I had only just seen this Truth: I was watching my own mind working like a sorting machine, and I was appalled. — Doris Lessing

In your late teens and early twenties, everything is idealism. Everything should just work in black and white. That's good. You need that. I think most revolutions are started by people in their teens and twenties. — LeCrae

I also learned to tell a story. I think I learned from poetry how to time a story. Poetry's timing, beats and pauses. That white space on the page is as important as the black. The bottom of the page is blackout. It's performance. — Sandra Cisneros

It does not take the constant barrage of bourgeois propaganda to reinforce the thinking among native-born white male workers that a woman, black, or migrant worker is a threat to his job security and wages. He already knows the competitive conditions of his class and the means by which his job and his wages are to be secured. He is King Rat, the guy who is going to survive in the middle of an all-sided struggle no matter how conditions deteriorate for the class as a whole in the open-air concentration camp of class society. His measure of success is not how he is doing in absolute terms, but how he is doing relative to other wage slaves. — Anonymous

Black-and-white thinking is the addict's mentality, which can be a bar to recovery when one is still active. But an addict who finds the willingness can then rely on the same trait to stay clean: "Just don't drink," they say in AA.
How's that going to work for an addicted eater? Food addicts have to take the tiger out of the cage three times a day. I've read that some drinkers have tried "controlled drinking," and it hasn't been very successful. Eaters don't just have to try it; they must practice it to survive.
Having a food plan is an attempt to address that, and having clear boundaries is a key to its working. But the comfort of all or nothing is just out of reach.
...
I'm saying that food addicts, unlike alcoholics and may others, have both to try for perfection and to accept that perfection is unattainable, and that the only tool left is a wholesome discipline.
The problem is, if we had any clue about wholesome discipline, we wouldn't be addicts. — Michael Prager

The first eight years of schooling was with all white people. So that helped me to understand how white people think. I think that transition is what helped me bridge the gap, because that's what my success has really been about: bridging the gap between the black community and the white community. — Will Smith

I think that the best day will be when we no longer talk about being gay or straight - it's not a 'gay wedding,' it's just a 'wedding' ... It's not a 'gay marriage,' it's just 'a marriage.' It's not a 'black man' or 'white woman,' it's just 'a man' and 'a woman,' or 'a human' and 'a human.' I'd just like to get to that. — Kerry Washington

Acceptance is the most beautiful word in any language; this beautiful concept can only exist when you allow other people to be who they are and do not imprison them with your definition of what is right, proper, correct, or other limiting criteria. Decreasing the black and white in your thinking allows for an expansive area of gray, allowing you to live your life and others to live there life. Acceptance sets us all free! This simple change of thought creates a wonderful space for happiness to thrive. — David W. Earle

I don't think it's a black and white issue. If a man's family is starving so to speak, I don't think I'll hold it against him for stealing a loaf of bread. — Zach Braff

I'm not really a political-type person, meaning that I don't really make great stands or whatever, but if you ask me a direct question I say it shouldn't matter who you are, whether you're black, white, green, gay, male, female. If you can do a job and do it well you should be paid for it, you should be respected for it, and you have to be responsible. I think sometimes people can go too fare trying to make a point. I think they should just make their point and go on about. — Dolly Parton

I think that we need more economic-based solutions to the problems afflicting the Black community, and I think that that's a way to redefine affirmative action. I grew up with poor white people in West Virginia, and I know there's a culture of poverty. I know that I've seen white people perform exactly the same pathological forms of behavior as Black people do when they're systematically deprived, whether it's getting pregnant, doing drugs, dropping out of school, whatever we're talking about. I think that we should have affirmative action for poor white people too. — Henry Louis Gates

Depression is a lot like that: slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearale. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getter older, about turning eight or about turning twelve or turning fifteeen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I think it's easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that's why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic. — Michael Emerson

I look at Woody Allen's prolific career of 30 or 40 films, and I'm watching the clock. I'd love to work at a clip of a film a year. We don't get the benefit of the doubt, particularly black women. We're presumed incompetent, whereas a white male is assumed competent until proven otherwise. They just think the guy in the ball hat and the T-shirt over the thermal has got it, whether he's got it or not. For buzzy first films by a white male, the trajectory is a 90-degree angle. For us, it's a 30-degree angle. — Dee Rees

There was [ in New York] - some of it was this perception of the Midwest that I realized in this multicultural city that - and I don't think it's as true as it was - but everyone was kind of like, what, are you Jewish? Are you Italian? What are you? You know, are you black? Are you da-da-da? Are you Puerto Rican? And so I ended up - my ethnic identity was Midwestern, was white bread. And so it informed a lot of my stand-up. — Jim Gaffigan

It's not anything that is just perpetuated by White America or just perpetuated by Black America. It's just a cultural understanding that you're just not a part of the equation when it comes to sexuality and I think that people mistake your lack of opportunity with the level of your talent. — Viola Davis

I've read quite a few readers' reviews of my book on Amazon, saying, 'Ah, he criticises the free market, he advocates central planning.' I don't do that for a minute! But this is our black and white, dichotomous way of thinking - which has really been harmful. — Ha-Joon Chang

I assume the president's going to say he got bad intelligence ... I think that wherever you see poverty, whether it's in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war and tax cuts for the rich. — Charles Rangel

Travis nursed his beer silently, looking out over the water.
"What are you thinking about?" Laird asked.
"It's not important."
"What is it?"
Travis turned toward him. "Did you ever notice how some colours are used for people's names but others aren't?"
"What are you talking about?"
"White and Black. Like Mr. White, the guy who owns the tire store. And Mr. Black, our third-grade teacher. Or even Mr. Green from the game Clue. But you never hear of someone named Mr. Orange or Mr. Yellow. It's like some colours make good names, but other colours just sound stupid. You know what I mean?"
"I can't say I've ever thought about it."
"Me neither. Not until just a minute ago, I mean. But it's kind of strange, isn't it?"
"Sure," Laird finally agreed.
Both men were quiet for a moment. "I told you it wasn't important."
"Yes, you did."
"Was I right?"
"Yep. — Nicholas Sparks

And conscience - his thinking was so black and white he thought I was going to hell for having premarital sex. It didn't cross his mind that throwing a water glass across the room at me when he'd found out I'd had premarital sex was not exactly heaven-bound behavior. — Deb Caletti

Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them. — Linus Torvalds

One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he's a black man who knows his place. And I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me. — Karen Finney

In my Philly neighborhood, black and white kids hung together without even thinking about it. The spirit of Martin Luther King was alive and well. — Daryl Hall

I started to try to be a colorist, although secretly thinking of myself as somewhat of a black and whiteist. — Susan Rothenberg

I do not look at the world in terms of black and white - and I find people who do rather scary. I think it's all shades of grey. — E.L. James

I can't really hear the audience applause when I'm on stage. I'm totally immersed in the piece. But sometimes I get a lot of it and wonder, "Now, why did they applaud here?" If it's a white crowd, they usually applaud because they think it's a pretty movement. If it's a black crowd, it's usually because they identify with the message. — Judith Jamison

I'm not at all against white people adopting black children, because we're all human beings who need to give love and be nurtured in safety, but I do think it's better to be adopted by blacks. — Kola Boof

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue. — Georgia O'Keeffe

It's time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin' black and white. You can see a black person. But now to get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - not the age, but the way of thinking. Old and new, actually ... because there's so many even older people that took half their lives to reach a certain point that little kids understand now. — Jimi Hendrix

I don't think of God as an old white man with no belly button, nor even an old black woman with no belly button. But I agree that God is something eternal. Something cannot come out of nothing. I believe God is Everything. And I believe in infinity. — Pete Seeger

Adolescents' immature thinking makes it difficult for them to process the divorce. They tend to see things in black-and-white terms and have trouble putting events into perspective. They are absolute in their judgments and expect perfection in parents. They are likely to be self-conscious about their parent's failures and critical of their every move. They have the expectations that parents will keep them safe and happy and are shocked by the broken covenant. Adolescents are unforgiving. — Mary Pipher

There's no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They have got nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt. — Bob Dylan

Leaning against my car after changing the oil,
I hold my black hands out and stare into them
as if they were the faces of my children looking
at the winter moon and thinking of the snow
that will erase everything before they wake.
In the garage, my wife comes behind me
and slides her hands beneath my soiled shirt.
Pressing her face between my shoulder blades,
she mumbles something, and soon we are laughing,
wrestling like children among piles of old rags,
towels that unravel endlessly, torn sheets,
work shirts from twenty years ago when I stood
in the door of a machine shop, grease blackened,
and Kansas lay before me blazing with new snow,
a future of flat land, white skies, and sunlight.
After making love, we lie on the abandoned
mattress and stare at our pale winter bodies
sprawling in the half-light. She touches her belly,
the scar of our last child, and the black prints
of my hand along her hips and thighs. — B.H. Fairchild

Everywhere, people are beginning to question masculine notions of control, aggression and black-and-white thinking - and instead are favoring more empathetic, nurturing and collaborative approaches. — John Gerzema

Colleen do you like doing this to your fans i cant even eat peanut butter in peace without thinking of Ren loves peanut butter. If i see white or black or hear forests and monkeys and waterfalls I go nuts!!!!!! — Nandanie Phalgoo

I'm thinking about American votes and American - all Americans, black or white have to be concerned about what's happening in the world. — Greg Gutfeld

I argue that the resurrection was not the Great Resuscitation. It was a total transformation. I just don't accept the black-and-white thinking that goes along with needing to regard the gospels are literally true. — Jay Parini

You have the right to set ground rules. This means deciding if, when, and how you want to see the people in your family. Many survivors feel that if they open up the channels at all, they have to open them up all the way. When you were a child you had two options - to trust or not to trust. Your options are broader now. — Ellen Bass

Perhaps the problem is the seeming need that people have of making black-and-white cutoffs when it comes to certain mysterious phenomena, such as life and consciousness. People seem to want there to be an absolute threshold between the living and the nonliving, and between the thinking and the "merely mechanical," ... But the onward march of science seems to force us ever more clearly into accepting intermediate levels of such properties. — Douglas Hofstadter

A story should be managed so that it should suggest interesting things to the reader instead of the author's doing all the thinking for him, and setting it before him in black and white. — Sarah Orne Jewett

Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That's when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it's not interesting anymore. It's when you have to lie that it becomes interesting. — Vincent Cassel

In theory, multiculturalism is something we should all celebrate; unfortunately, in practice, multiculturalism means multi-morality ... The only antidote to such nihilistic thinking is ethical monotheism, the belief in one universal code of ethics. Differing cultures glorify humanity, but differing moralities destroy it. We must teach what Professor Viktor Frankl concluded after surviving Auschwitz: There are only two races of human beings, the decent and the indecent. That is how the world is divided: not between rich and poor, men and women, North and South, black and white, the powerful and the powerless, or any other nonmoral division that too many contemporary liberals have been advocating. — Dennis Prager

Unbelievable," I said in disgust.
"What's unbelievable?"
"Your ego. It's surrounded by its own cloud of antimatter. You're a black hole of ... of hubris!"
Jack stared at me through the shadows, and then he averted his face, and I thought I saw the white flash of a grin.
"Are you amused?" I demanded. "What the hell is so funny?"
"I was just thinking if the sex with you is one-tenth as fun as arguing with you, I'll be one happy bastard."
"You'll never find out. You - "
He kissed me. — Lisa Kleypas

I started as a black-and-white teenage photographer, and I'm still there decades after. In some ways, the genre is almost gone. I am thinking of true, stubborn, lifetime black-and-white photographers, as opposed to black-and-white as a photographic commodity. — Hedi Slimane

And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate. — Zora Neale Hurston

In 1990, when we started the Black Community Crusade for Children, we were always talking about all children, but we paid particular attention to children who were not white, who were poor, who were disabled, and who were the most vulnerable.Parents didn't think their children would live to adulthood, and the children didn't think they were going to live to adulthood. That's when we started our first gun-violence campaign. We've lost 17 times more young black people to gun violence since 1968 than we lost in all the lynching in slavery. — Marian Wright Edelman

I pray for bravery and guts, for honesty and discernment. I know you have a lot to lose - we all do when we lay down our certainties and our black-and-white thinking. — Sarah Bessey

I'll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a Left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented! — Jose Mujica

I've played lots of villains in my time and I think the reason they've been so successful is that they're not two-dimensional. They're not black and white. That's the gig. — Mark Strong

I think love keeps on changing every day.
It's not black and white and it's definitely more than 50 shades of grey. — Ville Valo

I've always said as a political scientist that "culture" is what we use when we can't explain things. I think it's more about accessibility. Part of the problem is that this is an expensive game [golf]. I know in a couple of places where there are black members, and they come from pretty much the same socioeconomic level that the white members come from. — Condoleezza Rice

Yes. You do understand, you do. I knew you would. It was that analogy you made to the Quran that got me thinking in the first place. Metaphors: knowledge existing in several states simultaneously and without contradiction. The stag and the doe and the trap. Instead of working with linear strings of ones and zeroes, the computer could work with bundles that were one and zero and every point in between, all at once. If, if, if you could teach it to overcome its binary nature."
"That sounds very complicated indeed."
"It should be impossible, but it isn't." Alif began typing furiously. "All modern computers are pedants. To them the world is divided into black and white, off and on, right and wrong. But I will teach yours to recognize multiple origin points, interrelated geneses, systems of multivalent cause and effect. — G. Willow Wilson

I think of the described dynamics as a fluid negotiation. I don't think these specific interactions can happen to the black or brown body without the white body. And there are ways in which, if you say, "Oh, this happened to me," then the white body can say, "Well, it happened to her and it has nothing to do with me." But if it says "you," that you is an apparent part of the encounter. — Claudia Rankine

May 20, '95 - Mississippi calls. She says, "All my working life I have done things to help black people. I can drive into the black part of town where no white person would dare to go. I have nothing to fear. They say, 'Hi there, Mizz Mississippi.' I still call them niggers, but only because of the way they act. I'd have an affair with Johnnie Cochran in a minute." Once she said to me, "I don't see why I should have to feel guilty about the Holocaust. It's not my fault." I hadn't been talking or thinking about the Holocaust, and hadn't told anyone to feel guilty. Her remark came out of nowhere. We were in a diner, about to have a sandwich and suddenly the moment was explosive. Simply being a Jew arouses a peculiar expectation mixed with resentment, even in a highly intelligent woman. Amazing to me is that she doesn't do much but watch television, drink beer, and smoke Marlboros, and yet seethes with dark thoughts and tumultuous feeling. — Leonard Michaels

I went to a predominantly white school, and I was the only black girl. I can remember thinking, 'I don't want to be as dark as I am - I want to be a little fairer.' I didn't want to be me. — Kelly Rowland

White supremacy is a black person telling the people of Baltimore to chill out and try peace, thinking they came up with that thought all on their own. — Darnell Lamont Walker

People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it,but this is not true.I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important. — Franz Kline

Our education system is increasingly embracing a black-and-white way of thinking, in which 'learning' and 'play' are diametrically opposed. 'Learning' is the serious stuff that happens inside a classroom and can be measured via multiple choice questions and a No. 2 pencil. 'Play' is frivolous, fun, and worst of all, optional. — Darell Hammond

I know some of you must be thinking, This is a preposterous and thinly veiled attempt to obscure the use of relaxers, weaves, and lace fronts. Trust me on this one: Unless she tells you otherwise herself, every black woman's hair, though it may change dramatically from day to day in ways that defy nature, is absolutely her God-given, though possibly magically altered, hair. White people: Do not broach this topic. It doesn't matter that you've seen the Chris Rock documentary Good Hair. Like your favorite movie Frozen suggests, "Let It Go. — Justin Simien

Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind. — Bell Hooks

The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling.

And this sentiment is not complicated, but very simple and all of a piece. It does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way, never partially, or that kind of thing. — Adolf Hitler

The same principle held in black universities, where students demanded more and more black teachers. White professors who had virtually dedicated their lives and their academic careers as historians, anthropologists, sociologists, to the problems of racism and its cures, thinking they did this for the good of the oppressed victims of racism (and often suffering social and academic insults as a result), were asked to leave schools in favor of black teachers. Some of them turned very bitter. — John Howard Griffin

The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled. — Howard Zinn

I think we're entering a new period of filmmaking that's analogous to switching from black-and-white to color, or from silent to sound. The medium is completely flexible, and it's not bound by anything. If you imagine something, you can do it. — Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Owen remarked The basis of science and art is magical - vice versa, magic is art and science. It goes both ways. There's not ever black and white ... in magic or in anything to my way of thinking. — Luvelle Raevan

When Dylann Roof walked into a black church, he wanted to start a race war. We didn't let him do that because we didn't cast him as a representative of the white race. We didn't give into his narrative. We did the exact opposite. And I think that we have to be careful not to give into the apocalyptic narrative of ISIS that wants to start a war between Muslims and everybody else. — Chuck Todd

The lawyer was a short, ugly, little man. He stood about three feet taller than his desk's two foot eight inch frame and he had dark eyes. Lois couldn't tell if they were black or an extremely dark brown. His hair was dirty blonde and very messy. He looked as if he had just crawled out of bed. His white button up shirt was tucked in on only one side and the other side hung out freely. He wore a pair of tan khakis and a pair of black loafers. His skin almost matched the khakis which was extremely creepy and Lois kept thinking the man wasn't wearing pants. — Rebecca McNutt

White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear. — Assata Shakur

No candidate at present is thinking of justice for the Black and the Red and the Brown in this manner. And none of them are showing they will accept to let us go to save America from the Wrath of God. So Black and White have to know America now is in the crosshairs of God Himself, the Great Mahdi. — Louis Farrakhan

I understand the all black or all white look (to be perfectly blunt, it's easy and you don't have to think about it very much) but would any of us really want to be one of those people? — Tim Gunn