Top 80 Michael Eric Dyson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “To whom much has been given, much is required.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

2. “We can’t exempt ourselves from the same moral calculus that we are willing to apply to others.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

3. “I believe in a God of a second chance and a God of love and mercy, because I need so much more of it myself.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

4. “Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

5. “Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

6. “I don’t worship the Bible, I worship the God who gave the Bible.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

7. “No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

8. “The black church is quite literally a sounding board for vetting ideas and voicing frustrations so black folk can stay sane in the midst of America’s denial of black humanity.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

9. “My ambition didn’t grow out of nowhere. It was planted in me by a community that nurtured me.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

10. “Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

11. “I guess I’m a Luddite.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

12. “Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

13. “Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

14. “I used to tell people when I preached at a church, ‘If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.’”

— Michael Eric Dyson

15. “If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists, then this will have been a great moment.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

16. “My church is the world! I want to bring the gospel to as broad and as interesting an audience as possible.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

17. “I grew up in Detroit. I was a teen father. I lived on welfare for three years. I have a brother serving life in prison, though I believe he’s innocent.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

18. “The parallels between Elvis and Michael Jackson as incredible artists is evident. But I think that where Michael Jackson even transcends Elvis Presley.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

19. “Tony Morrison said, ‘Can’t I love what I criticize, criticize what I love.’”

— Michael Eric Dyson

20. “The status quo always favors neutrality which in truth is never neutral at all but supports those who stand against change.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

21. “I knew Snoop Dog didn’t start misogyny. I knew that Tupac Shakur didn’t start sexism, and God knows that Dr. Dre didn’t start patriarchy. Yet they extended it in vicious form within their own communities. They made vulnerable people more vulnerable.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

22. “When Dr. King was murdered, I had no idea who he was. But as soon as I heard his words on television that night when I was 9 years old, I was dumbstruck, awestruck by their power.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

23. “My empathy for poor people comes from having been one of them for so long, from knowing that their humanity is more complex and that the truths of their suffering have to be told honestly.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

24. “If we cite the Bible, and yet fail to live according to its codes, the Bible becomes just another book. But when we live it, it becomes powerful. If you believe it, the words of scripture say that we come living epistles in whose life others read the presence of God.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

25. “White-on-white crime is a devastation in America like so-called black-on-black crime. It’s not black or white-on-white crime. It’s proximity murder.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

26. “I don’t believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that’s the case, you ain’t self-made.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

27. “All of us should be much more humble and contrite when we point the finger at somebody else, because four more fingers are pointing back at us.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

28. “There’s a dark underside to philanthropy. People who give a bunch of money are deferred to, even when they are wrong. The emperor cannot be shown to have no clothes.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

29. “Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

30. “There’s a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called ‘The Bystander.’ The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

31. “Ralph Ellison is a classic work of erudition, grace, and elegance. Rampersad offers us an Ellison whose gifts and warts orbit the same universe of creative genius. Like Ellison’s work, Rampersad’s text wrestles eloquently with difficult truths about race, politics, and American life.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

32. “I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

33. “The failure to see color only benefits white America. A world without color is a world without racial debt.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

34. “One of the greatest privileges of whiteness is not to see color, not to see race, and not to pay a price for ignoring it, except, of course, when you’re called on it.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

35. “Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he’s also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

36. “Black bodies have been killed and progress has been stalled to provide white comfort.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

37. “Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

38. “I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mortality says to us that here’s a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

39. “Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn’t political and racist in refusing to worship with us.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

40. “I am subject to constant criticism all day long,” the president told me in our Oval Office discussion. “And some of it may be legitimate; much of it may be illegitimate. Some of it may be sincere; some of it may be entirely politically motivated. If I spent all my time thinking about it, I’d be paralyzed. And frankly, the voters would justifiably say, ‘I need somebody who’s focused on giving me a job, not whether his feelings are hurt.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

41. “The writer’s gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

42. “I think that what Donald Trump is doing, the way in which racism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim belief and the like are being expressed through the campaign of Donald Trump, calls for, I think, a very vigorous and aggressive response to what he’s saying.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

43. “Hip hop scholarship must strive to reflect the form it interrogates, offering the same features as the best hip hop: seductive rhythms, throbbing beats, intelligent lyrics, soulful samples, and a sense of joy that is never exhausted in one sitting.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

44. “When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don’t necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

45. “America certainly has made extraordinary progress. The collective unconscious of the nation has certainly shifted as a result of the civil rights movement and the developments in the ’70s and ’80s. We have witnessed a great expansion of the black middle class.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

46. “Institutional racism requires neither conscious effort nor individual intent.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

47. “Bill Cosby is a famous black guy who has a bully pulpit the size of the world; it’s global. He puts his colossal foot on the vulnerable necks of poor people, and as a result of that, we don’t have a balanced conversation.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

48. “I don’t think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

49. “Comedy is to force us to observe ourselves in ways that are humorous and yet, at the end of the day, that cause us enough discomfort with the status quo to make a change.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

50. “American history hugs colorblindness. If you can’t see race you certainly can’t see racial responsibility. You can simply remain blind to your own advantages.”

— Michael Eric Dyson