Angela Davis Quotes

I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change...I'm changing the things I cannot accept.

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.

We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.

When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.

Walls turned sideways are bridges.

Justice is indivisible. You can't decide who gets civil rights and who doesn't.

We must always attempt to lift as we climb

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

I have a hard time accepting diversity as a synonym for justice. Diversity is a corporate strategy.

Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.

The process of empowerment cannot be simplistically defined in accordance with our own particular class interests. We must learn to lift as we climb.

We are never assured of justice without a fight.

It is important not only to have the awareness and to feel impelled to become involved, it's important that there be a forum out there to which one can relate, an organization- a movement.

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.

Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.

It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo.

Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'

We still have to struggle against the impact of racism, but it doesn't happen in the same way. I think it is much more complicated today than it ever was.

It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals

Black women have been cultured to compare not connect.

Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.

Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence.

You can't criticize people for wanting to have a decent life or wanting to live decently.

Progressive art can assist people to learn what's at work in the society in which they live.

Racism cannot be separated from capitalism.

Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems.

No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step.

Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.

How I grew to believe Black hair has power, genius, and magic in it, defying gravity and limitation. I mean, look at how marvelous it is: Black hair grows up and out.

We have been basically persuaded that we should not talk about racism.

But at the same time you can't assume that making a difference 20 years ago is going to allow you to sort of live on the laurels of those victories for the rest of your life

I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively.

Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery - did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime.

we have accumulated a wealth of historical experience which confirms our belief that the scales of American justice are out of balance.

I think the lack of critical engagement with the food that we eat demonstrates the extent to which the commodity form has become the primary way in which we perceive the world.

Well of course I get depressed sometimes, yes I do.

There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.

Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative - these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework.

I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing.

A fair trial would have been no trial at all.

You can never stop and as older people, we have to learn how to take leadership from the youth and I guess I would say that this is what I'm attempting to do right now.

What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.

I guess I would say first of all that we tend to go back to the 60s and we tend to see these struggles and these goals in a relatively static way.

I never saw myself as an individual who had any particular leadership powers.