Mary Jackson Quotes in Hidden Figures (2016)

Karl Zielinski: Mary, a person with an engineer's mind should be an engineer. You can't be a computer the rest of your life.

Mary Jackson: Mr. Zielinski, I'm a negro woman. I'm not gonna entertain the impossible.

Karl Zielinski: And I'm a Polish Jew whose parents died in a Nazi prison camp. Now I'm standing beneath a spaceship that's going to carry an astronaut to the stars. I think we can say we are living the impossible. Let me ask you, if you were a white male, would you wish to be an engineer?

Mary Jackson: I wouldn't have to. I'd already be one.

Mary Jackson: I plan on being an engineer at NASA, but I can't do that without taking them classes at that all-white high school, and I can't change the color of my skin. So I have no choice, but to be the first, which I can't do without you, sir. Your honor, out of all the cases you gon hear today, which one is gon matter hundred years from now? Which one is gon make you the first?

Mary Jackson: Every time we get a chance to get ahead they move the finish line. Every time.

Katherine Johnson: How can you be possibly ogling these white men?

Mary Jackson: It's equal rights. I have the right to see fine in every color

Mary Jackson: Oh, I'll tell you where to begin: Three Negro women chasing a white police officer down a highway in Hampton, Virginia in 1961. Ladies, that there is a God-ordained miracle!

Mary Jackson: We go from being our father's daughters, to our husband's wives to our babies' mothers...

Night School Professor: Well, the curriculum is not designed for teaching a woman.

Mary Jackson: I imagine it's the same as teaching a man.

Mary Jackson: What the devil are you doing? Are you taking a break?