Top 60 James Weldon Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Lift every voice and sing.”

— James Weldon Johnson

2. “And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I’m lonely – I’ll make me a world.”

— James Weldon Johnson

3. “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.”

— James Weldon Johnson

4. “Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”

— James Weldon Johnson

5. “Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.”

— James Weldon Johnson

6. “She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves.”

— James Weldon Johnson

7. “Young man, young man, your arm’s too short to box with God.”

— James Weldon Johnson

8. “This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image.”

— James Weldon Johnson

9. “Labor is the fabled magician’s wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.”

— James Weldon Johnson

10. “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.”

— James Weldon Johnson

11. “So God stepped over to the edge of the world And He spat out the seven seas; He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed; He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled; And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down.”

— James Weldon Johnson

12. “We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.”

— James Weldon Johnson

13. “Do you know, I don’t object to anyone’s having prejudices so long as those prejudices don’t interfere with my personal liberty.”

— James Weldon Johnson

14. “The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.”

— James Weldon Johnson

15. “Make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come in touch with yours. But to attempt to right the wrongs and cease the sufferings of the world in general is a waste of effort.”

— James Weldon Johnson

16. “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.”

— James Weldon Johnson

17. “My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education, and by tastes a white man. Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of the United States?”

— James Weldon Johnson

18. “I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.”

— James Weldon Johnson

19. “I’m lonely I’ll make me a world.”

— James Weldon Johnson

20. “It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.”

— James Weldon Johnson

21. “It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.”

— James Weldon Johnson

22. “When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make.”

— James Weldon Johnson

23. “Music is a universal art; anybody’s music belongs to everybody; you can’t limit it to race or country.”

— James Weldon Johnson

24. “I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.”

— James Weldon Johnson

25. “In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the 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

26. “It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.”

— James Weldon Johnson

27. “Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.”

— James Weldon Johnson

28. “Some men enjoy the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life with worries few, A job of nothing much to do, Just pelf enough to see me through: I fear that I am lazy.”

— James Weldon Johnson

29. “I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.”

— James Weldon Johnson

30. “This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.”

— James Weldon Johnson

31. “O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?”

— James Weldon Johnson

32. “It is the spirit of the South to defend everything belonging to it. The North is too cosmopolitan and tolerant for such a spirit.”

— James Weldon Johnson

33. “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

34. “Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.”

— James Weldon Johnson

35. “As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.”

— James Weldon Johnson

36. “When one has seen something of the world and human nature, one must conclude, after all, that between people in like stations of life there is very little difference the world over.”

— James Weldon Johnson

37. “My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest.”

— James Weldon Johnson

38. “With his head in his hands, God thought and thought, Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!”

— James Weldon Johnson

39. “There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.”

— James Weldon Johnson

40. “I lived between my music and books, on the whole a rather unwholesome life for a boy to lead. I dwelt in a world of imagination, of dreams and air castles – the kind of atmosphere that sometimes nourishes a genius, more often men unfitted for the practical struggles of life.”

— James Weldon Johnson

41. “And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.”

— James Weldon Johnson

42. “The Southern whites are not yet living quite in the present age; many of their general ideas hark back to a former century, some of them to the Dark Ages. In the light of other days they are sometimes magnificent. Today they are often cruel and ludicrous.”

— James Weldon Johnson

43. “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

44. “My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.”

— James Weldon Johnson

45. “In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms.”

— James Weldon Johnson

46. “Shortly after this I was made a member of the boys choir, it being found that I possessed a clear, strong soprano voice. I enjoyed the singing very much.”

— James Weldon Johnson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

47. “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

48. “At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was not long before I was able to pick out a few tunes? I also learned the names of the notes in both clefs, but I preferred not be hampered by notes.”

— James Weldon Johnson

49. “It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.”

— James Weldon Johnson

50. “Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.”

— James Weldon Johnson