“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 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.

I believe in life. And I have seen the death parade.

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

I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port.

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.

I can trust my friends… these people force me to examine myself, encourage me to grow.

Kids are great. That’s one of the best things about our business, all the kids you get to meet. It’s a shame they have to grow up to be regular people and come to the games and call you names.

Having grown up in a segregated environment in the south I know what it’s like to be stepped on, I know what it’s like also to see some black hero do well in the face of adversity.

I surround myself with trees in the hope I might become a  growing thing, too.

Throw dirt on me, and grow a wild flower

We’re focused on doing one thing incredibly well. If you look at other companies, all of these companies are doing a lot of different things but we’re still, as we grow, doing exactly one thing.

The past grew a beast in me so I set it free.

I’m scared to death of being poor. It’s like a fat girl who loses 500 pounds but is always fat inside. I grew up poor and will always feel poor inside. It’s my pet paranoia.