“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.”

I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively.

In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.

I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing.

You can’t criticize people for wanting to have a decent life or wanting to live decently.

No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step.

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s actually going to be possible.

Progressive art can assist people to learn what’s at work in the society in which they live.

Radical simply means “grasping things at the root.

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

It’s my body and I have the right to do whatever I want to do with it. So does every other female on this planet.

I think we have to really focus on the issues much more than we may have in the past.

It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.

We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia

If we do not know how to meaningfully talk about racism, our actions will move in misleading directions.

We are never assured of justice without a fight.

You either evolve or you disappear.

Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing. If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing.

My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water.

Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial; and when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another.

Each one of us has the power to change the world. Shed light, and darkness disappears.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Racism will disappear when it’s no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it’ll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.

It is better to burn than to disappear.