These Harlem quotes will inspire you. Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Harlem quotes, Harlem sayings, and Harlem proverbs.
Best Harlem Quotes
- “It doesn’t do good to open doors for someone who doesn’t have the price to get in. If he has the price, he may not need the laws. There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills and brought my grandmother from Harlem to live in it with me.” ~ Sammy Davis, Jr.
- “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
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“Harlem is a stage. It’s like its own planet, from the way we dress to the swag in the way we walk and talk.” ~ Teyana
- “Despite everything that Harlem did to our generation, I think it gave something to a few. It gave them a strength that couldn’t be obtained anywhere else.” ~ Claude Brown
- “Melting pot Harlem-Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown.” ~ Langston Hughes , Harlem quotes nights
- “Hurry, get on board, it’s comin’, listen to those rails a-thrumming all aboard. Get on the “A” train, soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.” ~ Duke Ellington
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“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
- “All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.” ~ James A. Baldwin
- “You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We’re the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That’s when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.” ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
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“Harlem is filled with moments of history.” ~ Cheo Hodari Coker
- “I don’t have to really be in the 60s. Every time I hail a cab in New York, and they pass me by and pick up the white person, then I get a dose of it. Or when they don’t want to take you to Harlem. I grew up with that.” ~ Queen Latifah
- “For me, growing up in Harlem and then migrating down to SoHo and the Lower East Side and chillin’ down there and making that my stomping ground… That was a big thing, because I’m from Harlem, and downtown is more artsy and also more open-minded. So I got the best of both worlds.” ~ ASAP Rocky
- “You must understand as a kid of color in those days, the Harlem Globetrotters were like being movie stars.” ~ Wilt Chamberlain
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“Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.” ~ Zora Neale Hurston
- “I havent seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid.” ~ John McEnroe
- “I want people to take pride in Spanish Harlem. These are people that everyone in the community could relate to… people who mean something special to us.” ~ James de la Vega
- “My grandfather taught me generosity. He sold snow cones in Harlem. I went with him at 5 and he let me hand out the change and snow cones. I learned a lot in the couple of years that we did that.” ~ Erik Estrada
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“We had the skirts with the slits up the side, sort of tough, sort of Spanish Harlem cool, but sweet too.” ~ Ronnie Spector
- “I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin’ in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.” ~ Brownie McGhee
- “I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.” ~ Colin Powell
- “Any kid that feels like they don’t have any kind of future, whether they’re on a street corner in Harlem or in a little town in Kansas where nothing happens, it’s all out there for them. They can do whatever they dream or wish or see on television, or read about in the papers.” ~ James Brolin
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“Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.” ~ Debbie Allen
- “Once, when we were playing at the Apollo Theater, Holiday was working a block away at the Harlem Opera House. Some of us went over between shows to catch her, and afterwards we went backstage. I did something then, and I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do—I asked her for her autograph.” ~ Ella Fitzgerald
- “I grew up in Harlem. My grandmother was one of the best cooks around, but the first thing she did on Sunday mornings when she started cooking a daylong meal was to take a big block of lard from the back of the refrigerator and throw it into the pan. I know how Hispanics buy their food, and it is not always nutritious.” ~ Richard Carmona
- “I think probably one of the coolest things was when I went to play basketball at Rucker Park in Harlem. First of all, who would think that Larry the Cable Guy would go to Harlem to play basketball? And I was received like a rock star. It was amazing! There were people everywhere. There were guys walking by yelling, Git r done!” ~ Larry the Cable Guy
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“Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world.” ~ Constance Baker Motley
- “In Harlem, black was white. You had rights that could not be denied you; you had privileges, protected by law. And you had money. Everybody in Harlem had money. It was a land of plenty.” ~ Rudolph Fisher
- “In Harlem, I got all my black friends. But when I go downtown, I got black, white, Asian, Indian friends. There’s no borders, no barriers.” ~ ASAP Rocky
- “I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.” ~ Chadwick Boseman
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“As a Latino growing up in Spanish harlem, it’s not easy trying not to be hot-headed.” ~ Erik Estrada
- “Im grateful for my health, glad Im making people laugh, glad my wife still likes me after a lotta years, grateful my daughter is growing, glad I dont take myself too seriously, glad L.A. has Astro Burger, grateful to be coming home to Harlem soon. Its a gratitude list. It works.” ~ David Alan Basche
- “It’s about stories. If I can tell the story to America, whether it’s Riesling or a boxer from Harlem, it will sell. I know on my gravestone it’s going to be, ‘Storyteller.'” ~ Gary Vaynerchuk
- “In Harlem, for instance, all of the stores are owned by white people, all of the buildings are owned by white people. The black people are just there – paying rent, buying the groceries; but they don’t own the stores, clothing stores, food stores, any kind of stores; don’t even own the homes that they live in. They are all owned by outsiders, and for these run-down apartment dwellings, the black man in Harlem pays more money than the man down in the rich Park Avenue section.” ~ Malcolm X
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“As one who loves literature, art, music and history, I’ve been deeply rooted in the Harlem Renaissance for many years.” ~ Debbie Allen
- “Crisis’ 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.
- “Liberals believe that crime is inextricably linked with poverty. In reality, most poor people never resort to crime, and some wealthy people commit evil acts to enrich themselves further. Harlem, East Los Angeles, the South side of Chicago are not the poorest communities in the United States. According to a new U.S. Bureau of the Census report, the poorest communities are Shannon County, South Dakota, followed by Starr, Texas, and Tunica, Mississippi. Have you ever heard of these residents rioting to protest their living conditions?” ~ Rush Limbaugh
- “Many people in Harlem never go out of Harlem. I mean they’d never even been downtown. And you can see how this bitterness can accumulate. Here you see people crowded and hovered up in ghettos and slums with no hope.They see no way out.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“You white folks see UFOs in your dreams. You don’t hear about Martians in Harlem.” ~ Paul Mooney
- “I’m one of the people who believes that our losses were greater than our gains. Because before the Civil Rights movement we had entrepreneurship in the black community. Right now, in Harlem, if I wanted to get a shoe repaired, I would have a hard time finding a black shoe repairman. On near about every third corner, you could find a decent black barber, decent black laundry, had restaurants in the neighborhood that were open 24 hours. The food was good at 3 o’clock in the morning as at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.” ~ John Henrik Clarke
- “The short-range involves the long-range. Immediate steps have to be taken to reeducate our people into the, a more real view of political, economic, and social conditions in this country, and our ability in, in a self- improvement program to gain control politically over every community in which we predominate, and also over the economy of that same community as here in Harlem. Instead of all the stores in Harlem being owned by white people, they should be owned and operated by black people.” ~ Malcolm X
- “An important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money.” ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland
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“And Alpo ordered guys to slaughter guys, and the whole Harlem was in tears when Rich Porter died.” ~ Cam’ron
- “You cannot achieve environmental security and human development without addressing the basic issues of health and nutrition.” ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland
- “If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them. People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some dowdy old lady, and I don’t intend to disappoint.” ~ Brooke Astor
- “One of my first role models was Eugene Lang, a wealthy businessman who went back to his elementary school in East Harlem and addressed the sixth-grade class. He looked out at that sea of faces and said, “If any of you wants to go to college, I will pay for it.” When I read that, I burst into tears. It was so generous and so basic. Not fluffy. I can’t understand why we scrimp on education and shortchange our kids. Why would the citizenry do that to the people who are going to inherit its republic?” ~ Bette Midler
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“I love Harlem, it’s like a second home to me.” ~ Foxy Brown
- “As a kid growing up and seeing so much strife taking place in society, and particularly on Blacks and people of color, I had an opportunity as a young man to witness the change that was taking place in Harlem, the exodus of white folks leaving Harlem, which I thought was a very cohesive situation. But they felt that they needed to leave.” ~ John Carlos
- “The Harlem of my books was never meant to be real; I never called it real; I just wanted to take it away from the white man if only in my books.” ~ Chester Himes
- “I am particularly conscious of my connection to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance because I, too, am a Black poet, born into, and shaped by, the very community in which those poets of the past produced so much of the work we associate with the Harlem Renaissance. We speak from the same place, both literally and metaphorically.” ~ Nikki Grimes
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“I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.” ~ Langston Hughes
- “My peers at the time: you know, young black kids from off the streets of Harlem, having these conversations with me in my small, dirty little studio up in Harlem.” ~ Kehinde Wiley
- “The police can go to downtown Harlem and pick up a kid with a joint in the streets. But they can’t go into the elegant apartments and get a stockbroker who’s sniffing cocaine.” ~ Noam Chomsky
- “We both grew up in the atmosphere of struggle, both Ossie and me, … I come out of Harlem and Harlem comes out of me – wailing police sirens and street parties, rumors and landlords, that cultural, spiritual scene. And Ossie came up from the South, where struggle and dying were part of everyday life. That is who we are.” ~ Ruby Dee
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“You can never tell what’s in a woman’s mind, and if she’s from Harlem, there’s no use o’ tryin” ~ William Christopher Handy
- “Old New York City is a friendly old town From Washington Heights to Harlem on down There’s a-mighty many people all millin’ all around They’ll kick you when you’re up and knock you when you’re down It’s hard times in the city Livin’ down in New York town” ~ Bob Dylan
- “I don’t write police stories, per se, but I usually write about areas that are very panoramic, like Harlem, or the Lower East Side, or a small urban city like Jersey City.” ~ Richard Price
- “A long time ago, I took a walk down a street in Harlem in New York City. I came upon a man who asked me for a dollar. He had asked a few other people before me, but they only passed him by without glancing his way. I stopped and handed the man some money. As I began to turn away, he reached out and shook my hand. He looked me in the eyes and said, “I will bless you.” Now, I’m not saying that was God Himself. But how do we know that it wasn’t someone working for him, walking around in disguise, just to see what we would do?” ~ Muhammad Ali
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“The world has white people and black people in it. Even in Harlem.” ~ Angela Bassett
- “The thing that surprised me the most is just how much money women that weren’t rich were paying for their hair. When you’re in a beauty parlor in Harlem next to abandoned buildings and somebody’s paying five grand for a weave, that’s a bit much. I think this is, in a weird way, part of the health care debate. It’s like, hmm, there’s people with $2000 weaves that could have bought health care with that weave money.” ~ Chris Rock
- “When you look at Harlem – and I lived there almost five years – most of the people who live in Harlem are transplants. They migrate to Harlem from another place. A lot of them are from the south, so they bring those southern influences with them.” ~ Mike Colter
- “The one thing you’ll notice when you’re walking through Harlem is every single passing car is playing different music and there’s also music that’s being played out of windows.” ~ Cheo Hodari Coker
- “In my neighborhood – West 121st Street in New York, “white Harlem” – there were only two drugs: smack and marijuana. By the time I was 13, some friends and I were using marijuana fairly regularly. The Reefer Madness myth was still very strong then, but I’d been into jazz and those lyrics included so many casual references to pot that it was completely demystified for me.” ~ George Carlin
- “The best of humanity’s recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.” ~ Aberjhani
