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

History always seems to repeat itself.

Feminism insists on methods of thought and action that urge us to think about things together that appear to be separate, and to disaggregate things that appear to naturally belong together.

It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals.

Discrimination based on skin color, sexual orientation,& gender needs to stop. We’re all humans at the end of the day.

The process of empowerment cannot be simplistically defined in accordance with our own particular class interests. We must learn to lift as we climb.

I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect.

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?

Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group.

Feminism involves so much more than gender equality and it involves so much more than gender.

Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it’s perhaps far more terrible than it’s ever been.

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

Well of course I get depressed sometimes, yes I do.

The process of empowerment cannot be simplistically defined in accordance with our own particular class interests. We must learn to lift as we climb.

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

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.

Being feminine is magical.

I’m really proud to be a woman. I love that women can be feminine but also powerful.

Being a feminist is being equal to do what a man do.

As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.

The feminine is more powerful than the masculine, the soft is more powerful than the hard, the water is more powerful than the rock.

No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.

If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.