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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.

Angela Davis

Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery – did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime.
ANGELA DAVIS

Abolish Amendment Constitution Convinction Country Crime Slave
Radical simply means “grasping things at the root.
ANGELA DAVIS

Grasp Radical Root
As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.
ANGELA DAVIS

Country Participation People Politics Racism Struggle World
We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.
ANGELA DAVIS

Feminism Liberty Mind Society Talk
It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.
ANGELA DAVIS

Finding Hope Optimism
Progressive art can assist people to learn what’s at work in the society in which they live.
ANGELA DAVIS

Art Assistance Live People Progress Work
I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing.
ANGELA DAVIS

Black Lives Matter Community Encouragement Radical
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.
ANGELA DAVIS

Hide Perhaps Phenomena Racism Terrible
Anyway I don’t think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do.
ANGELA DAVIS

Government Movement Power Regard Thinking
Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.
ANGELA DAVIS

Disappear Human Being Jail Prison Problem
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.
ANGELA DAVIS

Commitment Life Lifetime Onself Revolution Serious Struggle
Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group.
ANGELA DAVIS

Development Perhaps Racism Vision Women
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?
ANGELA DAVIS

Food Freedom Ideas Politics Sense Starve
We should seek out all the doors which still remain ajar, however slight the opening might be.
ANGELA DAVIS

Door Hope Jail Open Seek
Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo – obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.
ANGELA DAVIS

Convert Danger Design Each Other Human Jail Obedient Population Prison Zoo
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.
ANGELA DAVIS

Agenda Consideration Equality Movement Seek Women

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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