Quotes about colors

„Love is often described as a fruit you can just reach out with your hand and pluck. However, one should beware, that although glowing in color, the fruit could be poisonous, tainted, or rotten.“

—  RJ Intindola (Gandolfo)

1986

„Optics is an example of the different ways a human is able to see things in the world. The same goes for the color of a person's skin and even though optics present that there are differences in color, these do not state that they should necessarily be treated as different.“

—  Edward Bouchet African American academic 1852 - 1918

Unsourced

„Dark green is my favorite color. It's the color of nature and the color of money and the color of moss!“

—  Leonardo DiCaprio American actor and film producer 1974

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

„At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.“

—  Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

Incesticide liner notes (1992)

„The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. …  I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.“

—  Georgia O'Keeffe American artist 1887 - 1986

1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
Context: It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. …  I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.<!-- Also quoted in Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (2007), edited by Richard Marshall, p. 13

„The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.“

—  William Gibson, book Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer (1984)

„In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery.“

—  Lydia Maria Child American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist 1802 - 1880

Chapter VIII http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abeslmca5t.html
1830s, An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)

„I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.“

—  Alice Walker, book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple (1982)

„In Europe Negro soldiers are used principally as service troops ·behind the ·lines, and I state now, on the authority of many American officers, that they ·were lazy; that they would not work; that it was a mistake to send them to Europe, and furthermore, that. they should be returned from Europe ar:d sent to the Pacific, where there are races of color.“

—  James Eastland American politician 1904 - 1986

1940s

„Where There is a will
there is a will
to search and discover
a better day

Where a positive heart
is all you need
to rise beyond
and succeed

Where young minds grow
and respect each other
based on their deeds
and not their color

when times are dim
say as I say
"Where there's a will
there's a way!“

—  Tupac Shakur, book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

„If a painting has a soulful effect on the viewer, if it puts his mind into a soulful mood, then it has fulfilled the first requirement of a work of art. However bad it might be in drawing, color, handling, etc.“

—  Caspar David Friedrich Swedish painter 1774 - 1840

Quote of Friedrich's letter 8 Feb. 1809, to 'Akademiedirektor Schulz'; as cited by Helmut Bôrsch-Supan and Karl Wilhelm Jàhnig in Caspar David Friedrich: Gemâlde, Druckgraphik und bildmassige Zeichnungen (Munich: Prestel, 1973), 182-83, esp. 183; translation, David Britt - note 117 http://d2aohiyo3d3idm.cloudfront.net/publications/virtuallibrary/0892366745.pdf
1794 - 1840

„The Great Dancer is my husband," Mira says, "rain washes off all the other colors.”“

—  Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

Mīrābā, in Christian Mysticism East and West: What the Masters Teach Us http://books.google.co.in/books?id=u2EBULLB-uQC&pg=PA121, p. 121

„What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.“

—  Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926

„America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" – a recently popular metaphor used to described New York's diversity – is being hotly debated today in national discussions about affirmative action.“

—  Sonia Sotomayor U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1954

Address to the Raising the Bar symposium (2001)

„The soul, equal and eternal, emanates from bodies of different shapes and colors. Whoever foments and spreads antagonism and hate between the races, sins against humanity.“

—  José Martí Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader 1853 - 1895

Our America (1881)
Context: There can be no racial animosity, because there are no races. The theorist and feeble thinkers string together and warm over the bookshelf races which the well-disposed observer and the fair-minded traveller vainly seek in the justice of Nature where man's universal identity springs forth from triumphant love and the turbulent hunger for life. The soul, equal and eternal, emanates from bodies of different shapes and colors. Whoever foments and spreads antagonism and hate between the races, sins against humanity.

„In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington.“

—  Paul Robeson American singer and actor 1898 - 1976

HUAC Testimony

„The heart can put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagination of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl, or diamond, or prism, can reflect.“

—  Horace Mann American politician 1796 - 1859

A Few Thoughts for a Young Man (1850)
Context: The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore. The laws by which the winds blow, and the tides of the ocean, like a vast clepsydra, measure, with inimitable exactness, the hours of ever-flowing time; the laws by which the planets roll, and the sun vivifies and paints; the laws which preside over the subtle combinations of chemistry, and the amazing velocities of electricity; the laws of germination and production in the vegetable and animal worlds, — all these, radiant with eternal beauty as they are, and exalted above all the objects of sense, still wane and pale before the Moral Glories that apparel the universe in their celestial light. The heart can put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagination of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl, or diamond, or prism, can reflect. Arabian gardens in their bloom can exhale no such sweetness as charity diffuses. Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him, a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies. <!-- p. 35

„A little while ago I took a nap under an olive tree, and the color harmonies I saw were so touching. It's like a paradise you have no right to analyze, but you are a painter, for God's sake! Nice is so beautiful! Alight so soft and tender, despite its brilliance.“

—  Henri Matisse French artist 1869 - 1954

In a letter to a friend, Nice 1918, as quoted in 'Matisse & Picasso', Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p. 6
1910s

„When people like me, they like me "in spite of my color." When they dislike me; they point out that it isn't because of my color. Either way, I am locked in to the infernal circle.“

—  Frantz Fanon, book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks