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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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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
States
Louis
Ran
Discrimination
Terror
United
Away

More quotes by Josephine Baker

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The old Catholic parties hounded me with a Christian hatred from station to station, city to city, one stage to another.
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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.
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To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.
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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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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.
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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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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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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I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed.
Josephine Baker
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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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The white imagination is sure something when it comes to blacks.
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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Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.
Josephine Baker
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The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts.
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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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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Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.
Josephine Baker
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Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun.
Josephine Baker
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I was learning the importance of names - having them, making them - but at the same time I sensed the dangers. Recognition was followed by oblivion, a yawning maw whose victims disappeared without a trace.
Josephine Baker
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Art is an elastic sort of love.
Josephine Baker