Profoundly inspirational melanin quotes will brighten up your day and make you feel ready to take on anything.
Famous Melanin Quotes
Beauty shouldn’t be defined by whether you wear the Deepest Deep Foundation (like me!) or the Translucent one. It’s all about confidence in your own skin and in your beauty. It’s corny, but it’s true. – Jayne Mandat
Our melanin will always make us marvelous… Just imagine what that sea of sisterhood would look like. Magic! – Alexandra Elle
I think one of the most important lessons that I’ve learned is to put your head down and work. Don’t look at other people and compare yourself. Just do the work. Because when the opportunity is there, you have to be ready. Make sure your craft is refined and you’re constantly working on it. – Tika Sumpter
Their skin drips the melanin, it absorbs the sun rays too, their hairs are graciously curly, aren’t they magical human beings? At times I get jealous of them because, ‘black is beautiful’. The always makes my head turn! – C. Vais Hnawi Rao
Not everyone is going to want, accept, or know how to receive your energy. Make peace with that and keep on. – Unknown
…In the history of television and even in film, I’ve never seen a character like Annalise Keating played by someone who looks like me. My age, my hue, my sex. She is a woman who absolutely culminates the full spectrum of humanity our askew sexuality, our askew maternal instincts. She’s all of that, and she’s a dark-skin black woman. – Viola Davis
Dipped in chocolate, bronzed in elegance, enameled with grace, toasted with beauty. My lord, she’s a black woman. – Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan
That bubble of doubt within? It’s time to stick a pin in it. And wear your dark and lovely face with a grin on it. – Princess Latifah
I am dripping melanin and honey. I am black without apology. – Upile Chisala
Whether light, whether dark, whether mixed, there’s only one of you. Don’t waste your time thinking that you’re not good enough. Don’t waste your time thinking that you’re ugly. Don’t waste your time because somebody else is thinking the same thing. If you’re thinking you’re beautiful, you can pass it off to someone else. – Robin Tavares-Russell
I’m black, I’m dark and I’m fking beautiful. My skin is gorgeous, I love myself, people with good eyesight love me too, and the rest of the world can fk themselves. I’m gonna have a little dark-skinned party over here. I’ll have a good time! – Michaela Coel, Vibe
Melanin is an incomparable beauty. From the lightest to the darkest skin tone, Black women and Black girls are exquisite beauty in every shade. Yes, Black females have that special something that just can’t be ignored. We are Melanin Queens, beautifully created! Respect the complexion. – Stephanie Lahart
The African race is a rubber ball. The harder you dash it to the ground, the higher it will rise. – African Proverb
Ther it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had. We need to live the best that’s in us. – Angela Bassett
Just because you are different does not mean that you have to be rejected. – Eartha Kitt
Your beauty will be in shades of melanin and light. – R.Y.S. Perez
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. . . . Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. – Zora Neale Hurston
I’m glad that Shonda Rhimes saw me and saidWhy not? That’s what makes her a visionary. That’s what makes her iconic. I think that beauty is subjective. I’ve heard that statement [less classically beautiful] my entire life. Being a dark-skinned black woman, you heard it from the womb. Andclassically not beautiful is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you. Now … it worked when I was younger. It no longer works for me now. It’s about teaching a culture how to treat you. Because at the end of the day, you define you. – Viola Davis
I can finally say I’m comfortable in my own skin, grew up despising the skin tone I was in because it’s been bashed for so long & society has been putting in our heads that dark is ugly. For all you beautiful chocolate girls/women out there you’re BEAUTIFUL & don’t let anyone tell you different. – Cori B. ESSENCE
My skin absorbs the suns rays and my hair defies gravity. You can’t tell me I’m not magical. – Unknown
Stop comparing skin tones. Who cares if your skin is lighter or darker than the person standing next to you? Change can only happen once you can truthfully look in the mirror and love that Deep Chocolate, Cinnamon, Mocha, or Caramel complexion. – Alicia D. Love
My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome and all of a sudden, Oprah was telling me it wasn’t. It was perplexing and I wanted to reject it because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower couldn’t help but bloom inside of me. When I saw Alek [Wek] I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now, I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the far away gatekeepers of beauty, but around me the preference for light skin prevailed. To the beholders that I thought mattered, I was still unbeautiful. And my mother again would say to me,You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you. And these words plagued and bothered me; I didn’t really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be. – Lupita Nyong’o
I am not my hair. I am not this skin. I am the soul that lives within. – India.Arie
When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list. – Michelle Obama
The one thing I feel is lacking in Hollywood today is an understanding of the beauty, the power, the sexuality, the uniqueness, the humor of being a regular black woman. – Viola Davis, ESSENCE
Who hasn’t heard the obligatory, ‘You’re pretty for a dark-skin[ned] girl’? Or my personal favorite, ‘I usually don’t date dark-skin[ned] women, but you’re so beautiful.’ … Still, I always knew there were far too many other people who saw my beauty and embraced every part of me with open arms to think twice about what was said. – Tika Sumpter, Rolling Out via Hello Beautiful
The Black skin is not a badge of shame but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness. – Marcus Garvey
I think the bottom line of everything, even when we talk about healing this colorism issue in the world, is that it starts with healing yourself. Because really you’re the only person you can control. Work on yourself and treat yourself, talk to yourself the way you would talk to somebody who you’re trying to heal. – India Arie
I remember I went through a period where I didn’t embrace my ‘chocolatiness.’ I don’t know if that’s a word, but I didn’t embrace my chocolate lifestyle. Just being a chocolate, lovely brown-skin girl and being proud of that. I remember Tina Knowles, Bey’s mom, and I remember being out in the sun and I was trying to shield myself from the sun and she said, ‘Are you crazy?’ She said, ‘You are absolutely gorgeous,’ and she just told me how beautiful I was and how rare chocolate is and how gorgeous the skin is, all of this stuff. And I was just like, ‘Yeah!’ Like a light went off. So between her and my mother and then me sitting out in the sun a little more, just to be a little more chocolate. You just embrace it. You embrace everything that you are as a woman, even your flaws too. – Kelly Rowland
God made me this way so I have to be happy with who I am. And it’s a journey. And I embrace my brown skin sisters. I love them and I hope that they embrace me. – Kym Whitley
Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count. – Zadie Smith
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. – Audre Lorde
I cannot run away from who I am and my complexion or the larger society, and how they may view that. – Lupita Nyong’o, Refinery
If you’re lucky enough to be different, don’t ever change. #bts@thecgirlinc #melaninpoppin #black #skin #blackgirlmagic #makeup #hair #blackgirlsrock #beauty #melanin #darkskin — Khoudia Diop theMelanin Goddess, melaniingoddess via Instagram
My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I’m going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. – Paul Robeson
I would tell my -year-old self, ‘You were fly, dope and amazing from birth. From the second you took your first breath you were worthwhile and valid and you have to find other ways to feel good about yourself that have nothing to do with being chosen by a man.’ – Gabrielle Union, xoNeCole
I’m convinced that we black women possess a special indestructible strength that allows us to not only get down, but the get up, to get through, and to get over. – Janet Jackson
Deal with yourself as an individual worthy of respect, and make everyone else deal with you the same way. – Nikki Giovanni
I am dripping melanin and honey. I am black without apology. – Upile
Melanin is the most ancient and worldwide pigment in living organisms. The very thing that colors the bark on trees brown and the soil of the earth. It dwells in your very essence. – Unknown
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. – Audre Lorde
Black women were created of brown sugar and warm honey. the sweetest thing to bless the earth. Be wary of anyone who tells you otherwise. – Alexandra Elle
We aren’t beautiful in spite of our Blackness, we are beautiful because of it. So don’t dare try to give the credit to anything else. – Shayla Pierce
Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth. – Iyanla Vanzant
My melanin is powerful. It threatens the ignorant, challenges the misinformed. My articulation intimidates. It demands respect the moment I speak. You understand me clearly and with all that all I’ve ever had to be, was black… – Nii Lee Cyrus
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise. – Maya Angelou
One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings. – Franklin A. Thomas
Black girl magic means we can do anything we want. We are natural born leaders and we presevere through everything and when somebody says ‘No’ we smile and keep it moving. – Tiki Sumpter
