“Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.”

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

We’re taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don’t have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is.

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

If you’re deaf, dumb, and blind to what’s happening in the world, you’re under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what’s happening and you don’t do anything but sit on your ass, then you’re nothing but a punk.

When I was a child, if someone had talked to me about buying water, I would have thought it was a joke.

Black people will never be free unless black women participate in every aspect of our struggle, on every level of our struggle.

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

If we are not committed to saving this earth we will be buying designer air filters and gas masks.

I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property.

No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.

We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It’s not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.

Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.

I don’t have to live up to that Superwoman myth. I can cry and be human and lean on people who take care of me. That can be very liberating.

The methods of peaceful protests are not capable of being effective, because in reality most people pay little attention to things that are not abrasive.

Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory.

Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford.

Violence just hurts those who are already hurt. Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.

Muslim women had to go out in purdah, that heavy sheet that covers even the eyes. Hindu women had to go out in the doli, a kind of closed sedan chair like a catafalque. My mother always told me about these things with bitterness and rage.

Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me.

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another – no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

From the first time someone says, Who do you think you are? we learn how to repress.

Racism is a form of hate. We pass it on to our young people. When we do that, we are robbing children of their innocence.

The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.

Racism is a grown-up disease, and we should stop using our kids to spread it.