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France made me what I am. I will be grateful forever. The people of Paris have given me everything. They have given me their hearts, and I have given them mine. I am ready, captain, to give them my life. You can use me as you wish.

— Josephine Baker

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Source and credibility

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Source: To the French Intelligence officer Captain Jacques Abtey, offering to become an agent of the Resistance (The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spy by Peggy Caravantes
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

More by Josephine Baker

I believe in action. … I believe in doing rather than talking. All my life I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice. This is why I traveled all over the world to adopt 11 youngsters.

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More quotes by Josephine Baker

I cannot see that I did anything extraordinary to merit this honor. Everything was just as it had to be."

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.

Josephine (1977)

I have stage contracts for the next 18 months, and I shall go on with them whatever he says.

Friends, to me for years St. Louis represented a city of fear... humiliation... misery and terror... A city where in the eyes of the white man a Negro should know his place and had better stay in it.

First, I want to do what I can to help win the war and thus perform whatever duty I can for my native land. Second, I want to help those of my own race. I am doing all I can to help win the war effort and to make people generally more appreciative and kinder to my race.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Josephine Baker (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.