“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.”

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.

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.

If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?

As inclination changes, thus ebbs and flows the unstable tide of public judgment.

I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.

Any great change must expect opposition, because it shakes the very foundation of privilege.

The second you change the way you look at a situation, your stress levels drop.

I never set out to write a book to change women’s lives, to change history. It’s like, ‘Who, me?’ Yes, me. I did it. And I’m not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.

What we do to animals directly impacts everything, because we are all connected. It disrupts the food chain, it funds terrorism (ivory), it changes our climate, our oceans, it starts wars.

In middle school, we are all so damn insecure. It was the worst time for me, really destructive, like slapping myself across the face but loving it. Now I have to be an adult and change myself. I have to be a bigger person.