Quotes from Eldridge Cleaver

Respect commands itself and it can neither be given nor withheld when it is due.

We shall have our manhood. We shall have it or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it.

You are either part of the solution or part of the problem. " Eldridge Cleaver

Ah, what sights and sounds and pain lie beneath that mist. And we had thought that our hard climb out of that cruel valley led to some cool, green and peaceful, sunlit place---but it's all jungle here, a wild and savage wilderness that's overrun with ruins. But put on your crown, my Queen, and we will build a New City on these ruins.

But it is not that easy, is it? I seek a lasting relationship, something permanent in a world of change, in which all is transitory, ephemeral, and full of pain.

I did not know that I had all these feelings inside me. They have never been aroused before. Now they cascade down upon my head and threaten to beat me down to the ground, into the dust.

I may even swagger a little, and, as I read in a book somewhere, 'push myself forward like a train.

Too much agreement kills chat.

It takes time and deeds, and this involves trust, it involves making ourselves vulnerable to each other…to become sitting ducks for each other----and if one of the ducks is shamming, then the sincere duck will pay in pain---but the deceitful duck, I feel, will be the loser.

What we're saying today is that you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

You have tossed me a lifeline. If you only knew how I'd been drowning, how I'd considered that I'd gone down for the third time long ago, how I kept thrashing around in the water simply because I still felt the impulse to fight back and the tug of a distant shore….

My slogan? PUT A BLACK FINGER ON THE NUCLEAR TRIGGER. 400 years of docility, of being calm, cool and collected under stress and strain would go to prove that I was the man for the job, that I would not panic in a crisis and push the button.

We knew that in the end what they were clashing over was us, what to do with the blacks, and whether or not to start treating us as human beings.

If God himself wills such misery on people whom I love, then I say I will deal with him

I'm hoping that it is too late for you to flip over on me because it is certainly much too late for me.

Total liberty for Black people or total destruction for America.

A relationship] takes time and deeds, and this involves trust, it involves making ourselves naked, to become sitting ducks for each other.

Revolutionary power grows out of the lips of a pussy

Every highly successful person is a maniac on a mission. Too much agreement kills a chat

I've gone beyond civil rights and human rights to creation rights.

The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.

If God himself wills such misery on people whom I love, then I say I will deal with him

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness.

You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.