Quote

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.

Josephine Baker

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Josephine Baker
Age: 68 †
Born: 1906
Born: June 3
Died: 1975
Died: April 12
Actor
Dancer
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Model
Singer
Street Artist
Vedette
St. Louis
Missouri
Freda Josephine McDonald
Joséphine Baker
Black
Anymore
Felt
Couldn
Left
Afraid
States
Leave
Wanted
Stand
Suffocating
Country
United
Liberated
People
White
Paris
Living
Realized

More quotes by Josephine Baker

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Art is an elastic sort of love.
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I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.
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You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can't go wrong. The world is behind you.
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I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.
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Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
Josephine Baker
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Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.
Josephine Baker
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...It looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty, the freedom to go where one chose if one was held back by one's color? No, I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made no promises. ~ Josephine Baker, once she had seen the Eiffel Tower
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Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun.
Josephine Baker
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When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away. Eventually I ran far away. It was to a place called France. Many of you have been there, and many have not. But I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country I never feared. It was like a fairyland place.
Josephine Baker
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All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.
Josephine Baker
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I spent 30 minutes each morning rubbing my body with half a lemon to lighten my skin.
Josephine Baker
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He was my cream, and I was his coffee - And when you poured us together, it was something.
Josephine Baker
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You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.
Josephine Baker
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The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.
Josephine Baker
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We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.
Josephine Baker
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I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.
Josephine Baker
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I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.
Josephine Baker
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I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.
Josephine Baker
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Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.
Josephine Baker
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The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts.
Josephine Baker