Ruby Dee's most memorable quotes

Much like her iconic sister, the late Maya Angelou, the revered Ruby Dee had enough humanity that she was able to love both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during a time when society demanded the support of the former and the condemnation of the latter. The civil rights leader and beloved actress, along with her venerated husband Ossie Davis, were wise enough to not only to support both freedom fighters and join them in Civil Rights advocacy. But Davis delivered a riveting and timeless eulogy when Malcolm was befallen by assassins’ bullets in February 1965.
Dee never stop championing human and civil rights even as she went on to have an illustrious screen and stage career, earning eight Emmy nominations, winning one, and earned a late-career Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role opposite Denzel Washington in the 2007 film American Gangster.
Most of all, Dee sprinkled gold dusts of inspirational messages onto the masses of urbanites throughout her enviable life.
Dee died on Wednesday, at her New Rochelle, New York, home at age 91.
Take a look at many of her greatest, most inspirational, quotes that energized a generation towards a more eatable and just society.
 
“God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear.”

“The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.”
 
“The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within: strength, courage, dignity.”

“Get up an hour earlier, stay up an hour later, make the time.”
 
“There was so much meanness in the atmosphere … but marvelous things pierce through the darkness of poverty and racism.”

“Paradise is to be the ultimate instrument, fulfilling God’s desperate intent that we love each other.”
 
“You have to learn how to be married. You have to learn to love somebody.”

“You meet all kinds of people that help put life in perspective and turn the horror into some kind of lesson or avenue of awakening that lives with you all your days.”

“That’s what being young is all about. You have the courage and the daring to think that you can make a difference. You’re not prone to measure your energies in time. You’re not likely to live by equations.”