Assata Shakur Quotes
Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.
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.
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.
Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is....never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.
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.
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.
Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford.
I think that, like many sisters, I was raised to be a Superwoman. I am a serious woman, and I want to be taken seriously.
We're living in a very tricky world, and unless we become analytical and expose the tricknology, people will become sucked into that. It is very easy, it is very, very easy.
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
Some people spell "good" with two o's and some people spell it with one... and there shouldn't be a contradiction between that.
I think that in order to struggle you have to be creative. In my life, creativity has been something that has sustained me; it awoke my spiritual struggle.
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
The U. S. is becoming more hostile to Black people and other people of color. Racism is running rampant and xenophobia is on the rise
My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle.
People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows.
People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom.
And if I know anything at all, it's that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down.
If we are not committed to saving this earth we will be buying designer air filters and gas masks with little Nike swishes on them.
Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It's really working to create something beautiful.
I was sentenced to life plus 30 years by an all-White jury. What I saw in prison was wall-to-wall Black flesh in chains. Women caged in cells. But we're the terrorists. It just doesn't make sense.
When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.
Being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression, otherwise I would have been free to be so much more.
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.
I've always been a student of different ways of looking at the world, different religions. That's been part of my survival mechanism, and also part of my curiosity as a person.
Hip Hop can be a very effective way to reach young people and teach them about current political and social issues.
The government recognized immediately that Rap music has enormous revolutionary potential and politicians immediately came together to end it.
Imperialism is the underlying motor of racism. The underlying reason that racism keeps on being promoted in all of its various forms.
All you have to do is ask yourselves, who controls the government? And who are the victims of that control?
Are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger? To sacrifice to end colonialism? To end neo-colonialism? To end racism? To end sexism?
In the long run, the people are our only appeal. The only ones who can free us are ourselves.
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.
How lovely it is to live with a sense of community. To live where you can drop in the street and a million people will come and help you.
I've tried as much as possible to avoid the standard nine-to-five thing. I've tried to organize my life so that I can move around, change the rhythm and the tempo.
My energy just couldn’t stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of struggle, and i wanted to dance.
The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody.
I stay connected in my head. I'm spiritually and psychologically connected to African-Americans. They are my people, and that will never change.
The abnormal, the sick, the vicious have become more and more interwoven into the violent culture of the United States. Into the way news is seen, into the way movies are seen.