“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.”

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

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.

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

Now I’m more behaved, I think it’s age, you get older, more responsible, more quiet. But if I would want to dye my hair, for example red or blue, be sure that I’ll dye it!

It makes me think—what am I going to be like when I’m 65?

The old are in a second childhood.

The biggest disease this day and age is that of people feeling unloved.

Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

I really loved football from a young age. And my only thought, my only objective in life, was to be a professional footballer.

About 800 million people in India are below the age of 35 years. Their aspirations, energy, enterprise and skills will be the force for India’s economic transformation.