Black Health Quotes & Sayings

Yet, if I were to adhere to my mom's advice, I would have had to drop out of school years ago (since a lot of folks in our inequitable education system refuse to love us), quit engaging public health offices (because I walked in as a human in need of medical services and walked out as a patient whose subjective world was mad invisible by research lingo: "MSM," otherwise known as "men who have sex with men'), sleep in my bed all damn day (knowing it is more likely that I would be stopped by police when walking to the store in Camden or Bed-Stuy while rocking a fitted cap and carrying books than my white male neighbors would be while walking around in ski masks in the middle of summer and dropping a dime bag on the ground in front of a walking police and his dog)... — Kiese Laymon

I am tired of writing memorials to black men
whom I was on the brink of knowing
weary like fig trees
weighted like a crepe myrtle
with all the black substance poured into earth
before earth is ready to bear.
I am tired of holy deaths
of the ulcerous illuminations the cerebral accidents
the psychology of the oppressed
where mental health is the ability
to repress
knowledge of the world's cruelty. — Audre Lorde

I want to just take a moment to thank the Teabaggers. Thank you so much for helping us pass health care, for resurrecting the Obama presidency. I know they're saying, 'Why are you thanking me? I was so against it, I marched on Washington with tea bags hanging off my Founding Fathers costume, with a gun on my hip and a picture of Obama dressed as Hitler, screaming about his birth certificate.' And America saw that and said, 'I think I'll go with the calm black man.' — Bill Maher

Everyone of you has a health that is unique and totally different from everybody else. Completely! Because we ... are all like snowflakes. — Lewis Black

It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child
a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem
and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium
when one child needs you more than the others
that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.
All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side. — Jodi Picoult

It is very extraordinary to see the perfect flush of health on her cheeks, to see the lustre of her coiled black hair, the poise of the head upon the neck, the grace of the white hands - and to think that it all means nothing - that it is a picture without a meaning. Yes, it is queer. — Ford Madox Ford

The World Health Organisation has a lot of its medical experts sitting in Geneva while hospitals in Africa have no drugs and desperate patients are forced to seek medication on the black market. — Pauline Hanson

This was my first indication of the quality I feel is most characteristic of Zora's work: racial health; a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature. — Alice Walker

Look, we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue for the Nixon White House that we couldn't resist it — John Ehrlichman

If slavery persists as an issue in the political life of black America, it is not because of an antiquarian obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery--skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment. — Saidiya V. Hartman

Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement.
If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board ... — Mark Twain

The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up the nature of this body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled. — Hippocrates

The human body contains blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These are the things that make up its constitution and cause its pain and health. Health is primarily that state in which these constituent substances are in the correct proportion to each other, both in strength and quantity, and are well mixed. — Hippocrates

The assumption that being gay or black necessarily harms the self-worth of all who fit this category has a patronizing dimension, because it neglects consideration of the agency that persons exercise in respect of imposed identity. — Michael Kenny

If you're working out in front of a mirror and watching your muscles grow, your ego has reached a point where it is now eating itself. That's why I believe there should be a psychiatrist at every health club, so that when they see you doing this, they will take you away for a little chat. — Lewis Black

When the black thing was at its worst, when the illicit cocktails and the ten-mile runs stopped working, I would feel numb as if dead to the world. I moved unconsciously, with heavy limbs, like a zombie from a horror film. I felt a pain so fierce and persistent deep inside me, I was tempted to take the chopping knife in the kitchen and cut the black thing out I would lie on my bed staring at the ceiling thinking about that knife and using all my limited powers of self-control to stop myself from going downstairs to get it. — Alice Jamieson

Homicide, often involving guns, is a disease that is the leading cause of death for young black men, and the second-leading cause of death for all people aged fifteen to twenty-four. That makes it the leading health issue, particularly when guns are used in combination with drugs and alcohol. And the statistics show that is most often the case. — Joycelyn Elders

Responding to Wright's critique, Hurston claimed that she had wanted at long last to write a black novel, and "not a treatise on sociology." It is this urge that resonates in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved, and in Walker's depiction of Hurston as our prime symbol of "racial health - a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature." In a tradition in which male authors have ardently denied black literary paternity, this is a major development, one that heralds the refinement of our notion of tradition: Zora and her daughters are a tradition-within-the-tradition, a black woman's voice. — Zora Neale Hurston

I was at Yale and I said to the poet Elizabeth Alexander, "I'm interested in the ways in which black health seems precarious in the United States." She introduced me to the term "John Henryism." And then I went back and researched it and understood that, woah, this thing I am thinking about is actually a condition that's named. — Claudia Rankine

Oh, silly me. Lottie is Olive's dog. You must have seen her: pretty little black cocker spaniel. Mind you, what Olive's son thought he was doing getting his mother a dog last Christmas, I don't know. Crazy with her health problems; and where is he now? Scarpered off to live in Australia. — Mary Grand

Physicians, patients, and ethicists must also understand that acknowledging abuse and encouraging African Americans to participate in research are compatible goals. History and today's deplorable African American health profile tell us clearly that black Americans need both more research and more vigilance. — Harriet A. Washington

I have waited for this, Beth, this moment," he whispered as he took her hands in his and brought her fingertips to his mouth, kissing each fingertip before placing her palms on either side of his face. "When Sussex, Black and I returned from the East, I watched you as you did this - touched Sussex, then Black. And I waited, holding my breath, barely able to control my feelings, waiting to feel your touch on my face. But you did not. You made a polite enquiry after my health and left me standing alone by the hearth. And, then, the other afternoon with Sheldon, you touched him, and I was alone, and apart again. Remembering what it was like to await your touch, and then never to feel it. Beth," he whispered as he moved closer to her, "won't you touch me? See me? — Charlotte Featherstone

Pursue whatever it is that you want to do with your life. It is the only secret to happiness that I know except for maybe true love, that and maybe having the amazing health insurance plan that our congressmen have. — Lewis Black

Think of how you feel when you are sick, or how you felt when you were learning to ride your bike. The physical state of your body has a direct effect on how you think about the world, on the state of your mind. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that your body has a direct effect on who you are. (30)
In an essay by Eric Saidel, Sirius Black: Man or Dog — Gregory Bassham

I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health. — Charles Barron

As indicated by the increase in maternal mortality in 2010, right now it's more dangerous to give birth in California than in Kuwait or Bosnia. Amnesty International reports that women in [the United States] have a higher risk of dying due to pregnancy complications than women in forty-nine other countries (black women are almost four times as likely to die as white women). The United States spends more than any other country on maternal health care, yet our risk of dying or coming close to death during pregnancy or in childbirth remains unreasonably high. — Jessica Valenti

I ask you ... to recognize that AIDS virus is not a political creature. It does not care whether you are Democrat or Republican; it does not ask whether you are black or white, male or female, gay or straight, young or old. — Mary Fisher

I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our health. — Bell Hooks

He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that's what TV programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it's not only Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical care; all people in America have to. Ah, he said. And suppose you don't have the money to pay? Well, I said, if you don't have the money to pay, sometimes you died. And there was no mistaking my gesture, even though he had to wait for the translator to translate it. We left him looking absolutely nonplussed, standing in the middle of the square with his mouth open and his hand under his chin staring after me, as in utter amazement that human beings could die from lack of medical care. It's things like that that keep me dreaming about Russia long after I've returned. — Audre Lorde

As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility - which I do. — Majora Carter

If any man has a ghost
Bourne has a ghost
a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak
hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets still left in downtown New York,
crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:
War is the health of the State. — John Dos Passos

I attribute the black tones in my films to Stephen King, Tim Burton, Joe Hill and Richard Matheson. However, most of my writing is influenced by mental health. I'm incredibly passionate about shedding light on the stigmas associated with mental illnesses. — Anna Akana

I saw a young sister, just before this service; and I said to her, "When did you find the Lord?" She replied, "It was when I was very ill." Yes, it is often so; God makes us ill in body that we may have time to think of Him, and turn to Him ... What would become of some people if they were always in good health, or if they were always prospering? But tribulation is the black dog that goes after the stray sheep, and barks them back to the Good Shepherd. I thank God that there are such things as the visitations of correction and of holy discipline, to preserve our spirit, and bring us to Christ. — Charles Spurgeon

Even though we know the origin of diseases, panic sweeps. It's one thing that frightens us, because it's your health and your body - it's more like a tangible threat; it's not like a foreign enemy you can fight. That was really what was uppermost to many of us whilst making 'Black Death.' — Kimberley Nixon

The fear of health care changing is beyond belief. Like there's a way to make the system worse. Really? — Lewis Black

Sometimes Fazlullah appeared galloping in on a black horse. His men stopped health workers giving polio drops, saying the vaccinations were an American plot to make Muslim women infertile so that the people of Swat would die out. — Malala Yousafzai

The Code of Ethics for Nurses states that "the nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and uniqueness of every individual, unrestricted by considerations of social or economic status, personal attributes, or the nature of health problems — Beth Black

Illegal immigrants are beginning to comprise a black market class of workers in our society, jeopardizing the financial health of companies which play by the rules, while themselves vulnerable to the exploitation by those willing to take advantage of their illegal status. — Spencer Bachus

It's an unfortunate word, 'depression', because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It's when your old personality has left town and been replaced by a block of cement with black tar oozing through your veins and mind. This is when you can't decide whether to get a manicure or jump off a cliff. It's all the same. When I was institutionalised I sat on a chair unable to move for three months, frozen in fear. To take a shower was inconceivable. What made it tolerable was while I was inside, I found my tribe - my people. They understood and unlike those who don't suffer, never get bored of you asking if it will ever go away? They can talk medication all hours, day and night; heaven to my ears. — Ruby Wax

It was a place for people with mental health problems and not alcoholics; as though the two could be neatly divided like that; as though the world was black and white and not a murky grey. — Victoria Spry

Black is the most essential of all colors. Above all, if I may say so, it draws its excitement and vitality from deep and secret sources of health ... One must admire black. Nothing can debauch it. — Odilon Redon

The government has departments to deal with the special interest groups that make themselves heard and felt. A Department of Agriculture cares for the farmers' needs. There is a Department of Health, Education and Welfare. There is a Department of the Interior - in which the Indians are included. Is the farmer, the doctor, the Indian, the greatest problem in America today? No - it is the black man! There ought to be a Pentagon-sized Washington department dealing with every segment of the black man's problems. — Malcolm X

You can do this (this thing, where your body will cease to produce hormones and your skin, hair, muscles and bones ... basically every part of you will notice, go into withdrawals, and stage a coup). Be prepared for this mentally, and you'll own this thing. — Lisa Jey Davis

I won't say that writing tamed the Black Beast. It soothed him, though, enough so he agreed simply to occupy a corner of my mind ... Gradually, I redirected my focus and skills towards causes much closer to my own heart: writing and mental health advocacy.
[ ... ]
I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw so many people who were much worse off than I was - deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness they way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode. — Terri Cheney

And as to being quick, why, bless you! That is only a matter of habit; if you get into the habit of being quick, it is just as easy as being slow; easier, I should say; in fact, it don't agree with my health to be hulking about over a job twice as long as it need take. Bless you! I couldn't whistle if I crawled over my work as some folks do! — Anna Sewell