Quote collection
79 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"When you deal with a man, deal with his most valuable possession, his life. There's play and there's the deep flow. I like to take things to the deep flow of play, because everything is a game, serious and nonserious at the same time. So play life like it's a game."
"Let us go on outdoing ourselves; a revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolutionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves or more than what we know we can do."
"I have the people behind me and the people are my strength."
"The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation."
"Existence is violent, I exist, therefore I'm violent. . . in that way."
"But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect."
"There will be no prison which can hold our movement down."
"The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people."
"I had a lot of time and the first year I was in prison, I tried to get the party to stop the shooting, to stop the talk about the gun thing."
"My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community."
"I know sociologically that words, the power of the word, words stigmatize people."
"Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite."
"The Cuban Revolutionary Government has been generous and very considerate to me and my family. I lived in Santa Clara for a few months because I wanted to work in the countryside and get to know the country better."
"When I was in the penitentiary after being accused of killing a policeman, I was more in the system in the penitentiary than ever."
"I worked in the mechanical factories repairing cement trucks. The Cuban government wanted me to work in the university as a teacher in literature, but I declined because I wanted a more sense of the countryside."
"We were trying to increase the conflict that was already happening... we felt that we would take the conflict to so high a level that some change had to come."
"When I founded the party in 1966, I had just turned 24.And each year, no, not each year, each day I live I've gained new experiences. Now the criticism is not to say the party did not play a positive part in those times, but, in order to be objective, we did not accomplish the things we set out to accomplish."
"I don't like to just talk of Africa, and south of the Sahara in general. No, I'll talk about the Third World in general. I'll like to say this - we in the United States would never believe that another form of goverment - I don't care even if it's against the racism, etc. - it is hard to get the masses of people to believe or accept that a socialist government will relieve them of most of the problems."
"I am very happy here [on Cuba], but I feel I have work to do in the United States. It's where I can identify with the total world struggle for socialism. But I think as a North American, as a Black North American, I have certain understandings - certain contributions - to make that are unique to the North Amerian experience."
"We always had a central committee. They were mesmerized by Eldridge Cleaver."