“We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.”

One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.

I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn’t know that.Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me

Leaders in Africa are so corrupt that we are certain if we put dogs in uniforms and put guns on their shoulders, we’d be hard put to distinguish them.

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn’t because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it’s not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.

There is a higher law than the law of government. That’s the law of conscience.

One does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about.

No man can given anybody his freedom.

Go home and tell your daughters they are beautiful.

There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.

The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.

We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.

Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they’re built upon racism.

Now you know where I got my name.

I have two passions in my life. One is to raise the awareness of the internment of Japanese-American citizens. My other passion is the theater.

What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.

I know where I’m going, and I know where I’ve been.

A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

I’ve always tried to be aware of what I say in my films, because all of us who make motion pictures are teachers – teachers with very loud voices.

For the future, the motto is, “No days unalert.”

If someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow. If they’re not self-aware, I think it’s harder for them to evolve or adapt beyond who they already are.