John Henrik Clarke Quotes
Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.
White people think when you love yourself you hate them. No, when I love myself they become irrelevant to me.
What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.
If we are going to be masters of our destiny, we must be masters of the ideas that influence that destiny.
Most human behavior is controlled by images. Image is a factor in how people look at themselves and what they use to reflect themselves. The control of images is a major factor in world power.
To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful.
It's time for Black people to stop playing the separating game of geography, of where the slave ship put us down. We must concentrate on where the slave ship picked us up.
We will have taken one giant step forward when we face this reality: Powerful people never teach powerless people how to take their power away from them.
Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world.
Egypt gave birth to what later would become known as 'Western Civilization,' long before the greatness of Greece and Rome.
A people's relationship to their heritage is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother.
Africa is our center of gravity, our cultural and spiritual mother and father, our beating heart, no matter where we live on the face of this earth.
...education has but one honorable purpose, one alone, everything else is a waste of time......that is to train the student to be a proper handler of power.
Anytime you turn on your own concept of God, you are no longer a free man. No one needs to put chains on your body, because the chains are on your mind.
Everything that touches YOUR life, must be an instrument of YOUR liberation or tossed into the trash cans of HISTORY
To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.
The role of religions in the domination and destruction of African civilizations was ruthless... Islam was as guilty as all the rest.
Each generation must assume the responsibility of securing their manhood, their womanhood, the definition of their being on earth that in the final analysis is nationhood.
I question the political judgement of those who would have the nerve to paint Christ white with his obvious African nose, lips and wooly hair.
A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson.
She was not a white woman. She was not a Greek... Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color.
Malcolm X found the language that communicated across the board, from college professor to floor sweeper, all at the same time, without demeaning the intellect of either.
I don't attend any particular church now. I don't believe in denominations, nor do I believe in organized religion.
The first light of human consciousness and the world's first civilizations were in Africa.
African people need to stop shouting 'nationtime' until they are clear about the responsibilities of running a nation.
Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'
You can see in our churches most of the males are pastors. Most of the deacons are males. But if the woman withdrew her support from our churches, you'd have to close the doors.
There was a time when all dark-skinned people were called Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa as, 'The Land Of The Burnt-Face People.'
Violence among all people is based on dissatisfaction, frustration and crushed ambition and people who don't know who to strike at and who to blame, and not willing to blame themselves.
When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born.
The impact of racism has changed our look at ourselves because basically racism was meant to make us look unfaithfully at ourselves, and to not treasure our institutions.
If people do not know where they have been and what they have been they don't know what they are. They don't know where they going to have to go or where they still have to be.
In Africa, the woman was co-equal. In Europe, the woman was a vassal. To some extent, she still is.
Europeans not only colonized most of the world, they colonized information about the world.
I am a nationalist, and a Pan-Africanist, first and foremost. I was well grounded in history before ever taking a history course. I did not spend much formal time in school - I had to work.
I think that you're just as close to Jesus if you use the equipment he gave you other than to call on him to do for you what you can do for yourself.
My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together.
I could pull all kinds of games on my mother. I couldn't pull any games on my father.
If you don't like the situation, if you are afraid and can't deal with it, nothing wrong with your legs, get out of there.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, African-American historians began to look at their people's history from their vantage point and their point of view.