Quotes About Oppression

The world since Adam has been white—and corrupt. The world of tomorrow will be black—and righteous. In the white world there has been nothing but slavery, suffering, death and colonialism. In the black world of tomorrow, there will be true freedom, justice and equality for all. And that day is coming—sooner than you think.

We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.

These negroes aren't asking for no nation. They wanna crawl back on the plantation.

All of us - who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries - were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system.

Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back--and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

You cannot separate peace and freedom .Because noone can be at peace unless he has his freedom .

It's a crime, the lie that has been told to generations of black men and white men both. Little innocent black children, born of parents who believed that their race had no history. Little black children seeing, before they could talk, that their parents considered themselves inferior. Innocent black children growing up, living out their lives, dying of old age—and all of their lives ashamed of being black. But the truth is pouring out of the bag now.

It seems that some women love to be exploited. when they are not exploited, they exploit the man.

No, there is plenty wrong with Negroes. They have no society. They're robots, automatons. No minds of their own. I hate to say that about us, but it's the truth. They are a black body with a white brain.

A thousand ways every day, the white man is telling you You can't live here, you can't enter here, you can't eat here, drink here, walk here, work here, you can't ride here, you can't play here, you can't study here. Haven't we seen enough to see that he has no plan to *unite* with you?

Why is the American black man so complacent about being trampled upon? Why doesn't the American black man fight to be a human being?

If ballots won't work, bullets will.

Whether you use bullets or ballots, you've got to aim well; don't strike at the puppet, strike at the puppeteer.

It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.

You don't have a revolution in which you love your enemy. And you don't have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems.

How is the black man going to get 'civil rights' before he first wins his human rights?

If you are born in America with a black skin, you're in prison

Either you are a citizen or you are not a citizen at all. If you are citizen, you are free; if you're not a citizen you are a slave.

Under the pitiful misapprehension that it would make them better, these Hill Negroes were breaking their backs trying to imitate white people.

This is still one of the black man's big troubles today. So many of those so-called "upper class" Negroes are so busy trying to impress on the white man that they are "different from those others" that they can't see they are only helping the white man to keep his low opinion of all Negroes.

Every addict takes junk to escape something, the Muslim explains. He explains that most black junkies really are trying to narcotize themselves against being a black man in the white man's America. But, actually, the Muslim says, the black man taking dope is only helping the white man to prove that the black man is nothing.

For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, 'Do you hate me?

All of us—who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries—were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system.