Great Throughts Treasury

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

"A man is born free."

"Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks."

"An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does - must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan."

"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."

"Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it."

"I knew that I could vote and that that wasn't a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived."

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

"I usually say I did the best I could with what I had. I have no major regrets."

"Integration is a man's ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him."

"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."

"It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."

"No man can give anybody his freedom."

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

"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."

"Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent."

"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."

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

"Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath. We ain't running no more."

"The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself."

"The secret of life is to have no fear; it's the only way to function."

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

"This country is a nation of thieves. It stole everything it has, beginning with black people. The U.S. cannot justify its existence as the policeman of the world any longer. I do not want to be a part of the American pie. The American pie means raping South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South America, raping the Philippines, raping every country you’ve been in. I don’t want any of your blood money. I don’t want to be part of that system. We must question whether or not we want this country to continue being the wealthiest country in the world at the price of raping everybody else."

"We are revolutionaries."

"The first need of a free people is to define their own terms."

"The knowledge I have now is not the knowledge I had then."

"The masses don't shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals."

"The only position for women in SNCC is prone."

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

"You see that honky McNamara on television? He ain't nothing but a racist. He says, Yes, we are going to draft thirty percent of the Negroes in the Army. This is where they can have equal opportunity. Yeah. Yes? yes it's true that they are only ten percent of the population, but this is a better chance for them. When that honky talk about drafting thirty percent black people, he's talking about black urban"

"We wanted to say that this is a student conference, as it should be, held on a campus, and that we're not ever to be caught up in the intellectual masturbation of the question of Black Power."

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

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