Quotes from John Henrik Clarke

Had Elijah Muhammad tried to introduce an orthodox form of Arab-oriented Islam, I doubt if he would have attracted 500 people, but he introduced a form of Islam that would communicate with the people he had to deal with. He was the king to those who had no king, and he was the messiah to those some people thought unworthy of a messiah.

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.

If we don't unite, chances are we will go back into slavery.

If we are going to be masters of our destiny, we must be masters of the ideas that influence that destiny.

Your behavior determines, to some extent, the destiny of your nation and your group.

Every form of true education trains the student in self-reliance

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.

Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil.

Racists will always call you a racist when you identify their racism. To love yourself now - is a form of racism. We are the only people who are criticized for loving ourselves. and white people think when you love yourself you hate them. No, when I love myself they become irrelevant to me.

History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are, but more importantly, what they must be.

I only debate my equals. All others, I teach.

Every single thing that touches your life, religious, socially and politically, must be an instrument of your liberation or you must throw it into the ashcan of history.

Les autres [leaders de l'époque] suppliaient qu'on nous laisse entrer dans la maison de l'oppresseur, Malcolm [Malcolm X], lui, nous disait de construire notre propre maison

After the rise and decline of Greek civilisation and the Roman destruction of the city of Carthage, they made one area of the conquered territories into a province which they called Africa, a word derived from afri and the name of a group of people about whom little is known. At first the word applied only to the Roman colonies of North Africa. 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.

I could pull all kinds of games on my mother. I couldn't pull any games on my father.

You can change your position, without changing your condition. We are no further from slavery now, than we was after the Emancipation.