“When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people then you are making a statement and the statement is clear.”

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.

The first part of planning is to believe that you can put that plan into practice.

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

We are pregnant with freedom.

Hip Hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young people’s political and social consciousness.

A revolutionary woman can’t have no reactionary man. If he’s not about liberation, if he’s not about struggle, if he ain’t about building a strong Black family, if he ain’t about building a strong Black nation, then he ain’t about nothing.

We’re living in a very tricky world, and unless we become analytical and expose the tricknology, people will become sucked into that. It is very easy, it is very, very easy.

This planet is a wonderful place, but a vulnerable place.

Imperialism is the underlying motor of racism. The underlying reason that racism keeps on being promoted in all of its various forms.

I realized that I was connected to Africa.

Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is – never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.

Every person that steps up and commits to social change helps solidify the black movement cause. It is not easy for those who fill in the leader role.

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.

Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.

We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice.

I hate war, and I hate having to struggle. I honestly do because I wish I had been born into a world where it was unnecessary.

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it…. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.

I ask you in circles, and you shape them as triangles in my head.

Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.

What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?

The most personal thing I’ve put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It’s better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power.

We were electric together, you and me; we turned hurting each other into a goddamned symphony.

Poisoned food will look like nourishment to someone who is starving. The same principle applies to abusive relationships.

Right now, I’m following the Buddhist principle: Smile as abuse is hurled your way and this too shall pass.