What you give ought to be in direct relationship to what you've received. If you have been blessed with a great deal, then you have a lot of giving to do.
Johnnetta B. ColeThere are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job.
Johnnetta B. ColeAn education that teaches you to understand something about the world has done only half of the assignment. The other half is to teach you to do something about making the world a better place.
Johnnetta B. ColeIf folks can learn to be racist, then they can learn to be anti racist. If being sexist ain't genetic, then, dad gum, people can learn about gender equality.
Johnnetta B. ColeThe ultimate expression of generosity is not in giving of what you have, but in giving of who you are.
Johnnetta B. ColeShow me someone content with mediocrity and I'll show you someone destined for failure.
Johnnetta B. ColeThe histories of the poor and the powerless are as important as those of their conquerors, their colonizers, their kings and queens.
Johnnetta B. ColeWhile it is true that without a vision the people perish, it is doubly true that without action the people and their vision perish as well.
Johnnetta B. ColeFaced with what seems like an impossible task, a group of folks will do well to remember the African proverb: When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.
Johnnetta B. ColeThe woman who bore me is no longer alive, but I seem to be her daughter in increasingly profound ways.
Johnnetta B. ColeThe myth of black women profiting at the expense of black men is the oldest rap around.
Johnnetta B. Coleif we center our lives on BMWs, RVs, VCRs, PCs and the other acronyms of consumerism, we cannot expect our children to do otherwise.
Johnnetta B. ColeThe content of the curriculum should never exclude the realities of the very students who must intellectually wrestle with it. When students study all worlds except their own, they are miseducated.
Johnnetta B. ColeThe more we pull together toward a new day, the less it matters what pushed us apart in the past.
Johnnetta B. ColeCrisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world.
Johnnetta B. Cole