James Weldon Johnson Quotes

"O Black and unknown bards of long ago,/ How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?"
-James Weldon Johnson

"Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune."
-James Weldon Johnson

"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

"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

"The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and all they have produced. The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art."
-James Weldon Johnson

"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