Remembering Cicely Tyson: Revisiting her best 10 quotes of all time one year after her death
By Chenelle Connor // Quotes // EEW Magazine Online
Cicely Tyson, the pioneering, Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Black actor who left us on January 28, 2021, at age 96 is gone but never forgotten.
On the one-year anniversary of the death of the iconic woman whose seven-decade career spanned movies, TV and plays, EEW Magazine Online is revisiting her best and wisest 10 quotes of all time.
Here they are in no particular order:
#1 On being led by God: “I'm a firm believer in divine guidance.”
#2 On handling rejection: “I have learned not to allow rejection to move me.”
#3 On how she wanted to be remembered: “I want to be recalled as one who squared my shoulders in the service of Black women, as one who made us walk taller and envision greater for ourselves.”
#4 On what truly mattered to her: “The glitter, the ribbons, the garnish I’ve experienced during my life — as wonderful as those things are, I have little desire to reflect on them solely. What I am far more interested in is the tree that represents my life and strength and condition of its roots.”
#5 On what trumps money: “I’ve never really worked for money. It’s so important for me to have peace of mind, body, and soul than to have all the riches.”
#6 On how to handle others’ attempts to belittle you: "The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat."
#7 On the benefit of challenges: “Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch — what make you go beyond the norm.”
#8 On being a fighter: "I am not a quitter. I will fight until I drop. It is just a matter of having some faith in the fact that as long as you are able to draw breath in the universe, you have a chance."
#9 On aging: "Age is just a number. Life and aging are the greatest gifts that we could possibly ever have."
#10 On what it means to be wealthy: "I don’t think you can measure wealth in dollars and cents. I really don’t believe that at all because there are some things that money cannot buy. One of them is health. And the other is security in your relationships and friends."
We will cherish her wisdom forever.
Want more empowering words from Queen Cicely? She left them for us all in her first memoir, "Just As I Am," which was released in 2021.
