James Weldon Johnson Quotes

You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.

Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.

Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.