Just as every yin needs a yang, every positive needs a negative, likewise everything that is white needs a black to have a sense of dichotomy and to feel complete. While colors breathe life into our lives, black and white bring a sense of tranquility; it’s inanimate yet so full of life. In this Quotabulary article, we bring to you 33 famous black and white quotes and sayings.
Can you see things only as black or white?
Splitting, also known as black and white thinking is a type of cognitive disorder where people fail to see possibilities in situations because they are only accustomed to seeing either as positive or negative and not a mixture of two. For them, things are either good or bad as they fail to the shades of gray (possibilities) in their lives.
Divesting a picture from its colors is like disrobing; you see everything in its natural state, without any charade, without any distractions; everything raw and everything pure. Photographers all over the world know the power of black and white and how it can make something appear mysterious and real at the same time. Depth, dynamism, and simplicity are so beautifully wrought in black and white photos that you almost feel that the subject is going to spring to life.
Black and White Quotes
“Mortals. Everything is so black and white to you.”― Kami Garcia
“Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.”― Louis Aragon
“My philosophy, like color television, is all there in black and white”― Monty Python
“I don’t know why we work, my husband and I. We just do. We are black and white – yin and yang.”― Heidi Klum
“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”― Ted Grant
“Books bring alluring colors to our mundane black and white world.”― Caleb Reese
“When you’re the victim of the behavior, it’s black and white; when you’re the perpetrator, there are a million shades of gray.”― Laura Schlessinger
“Celluloid will be the next decade’s black and white.”― Danny Boyle
“It is not that Shakespeare’s art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing.”― Stephen Greenblatt
“Diversity doesn’t mean black and white only.”― Henry Louis Gates
“Life isn’t black and white. It’s a million gray areas, don’t you find?”― Ridley Scott
“The way I was brought up by my parents and guided through my football life by the influences of various managers means that in some ways I am black and white.”― Stuart Pearce
“It’s not hard to get your way when it’s your way or the highway. People either follow suit or they’re not around. I don’t really like the sound of that, ’cause that sounds like a temper tantrum. I’m just very black and white when it comes to my business. There’s really no gray area.”― Nicki Minaj
“It’s about you. If you win, it’s you; if you lose, it’s you. Black and white. Nowhere to hide.”― Greg Rusedski
“In tragedy, it’s hard to find a good resolution; it’s not black and white: it’s a big fog of gray.”― Paul Dano
“I work in colour sometimes, but I guess the images I most connect to, historically speaking, are in black and white. I see more in black and white – I like the abstraction of it.”― Mary Ellen Mark
“Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.”― Doris Lessing
“In the beginning it was all black and white.”― Maureen O’Hara
“We’re so quick to go to make things black and white, and to put things in their box. But everything is this mixture – and that’s what this world is – is this blend of different things.”― Matisyahu
“Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood.”― Ginger Rogers
“Since I am from Spain, once the morning has gone, I like to take a nap while falling asleep to black and white movies. It feels less lonely. There is a comfort in hearing their voices, like when you’re a child and your mother tells you a story before bedtime.”― Jordi Molla
“Relations between black and white would be greatly improved if we were more accepting of our fears and our feelings and more vocal about it.”― Sarah Silverman
“When I look into the crowd, I see young and old, black and white – it’s amazing that I’m able to connect with so many different kinds of people.”― Patti LaBelle
“It’s good to play something that’s black and white, and a guy that sees right and wrong. I’ve never played a character like that.”― David Lyons
“The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall.”― Mary Douglas
“In movies we tend make things black and white: you’re either this, or you’re that.”― Bill Skarsgard
“I think it’s because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn’t necessarily reach the heart.”― Kim Hunter
“Which is probably the reason why I work exclusively in black and white… to highlight that contrast.”― Leonard Nimoy
“When we don’t have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you’re painting it and white is never as white.”― Patricia Sun
“To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul.”― Andri Cauldwell