John Ridley Quotes

We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and structural racism, but in the end, you can't wait for white man or a Black man to come riding in on a white horse to save you. We have to save ourselves, and that's the lesson of "The African Americans."

We must recognize that all the civil rights laws in the world are not going to solve the problem of minority underachievement. Ultimately, blacks and Hispanics are going to have to see that their solution is largely in their own hands.

The role of government is to steer us in the right direction, not do all the work for us.

I think the black community is no different from any other community. We need to take responsibility for how we live together. We need to be personally responsible for keeping our streets clean, our schools safe, and our houses peaceful.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves - they can't depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.

Lenin strove constantly to get the people to understand that the leaders could not do everything for them, that they them-selves, with their own hands, would have to build a new life and defend their own state; in this he proved himself to be a real people's leader, able to show the people the way forward and induce them to take the first step forward fully conscious of their aim, instead of following blindly behind the leaders.

The main and basic responsibility for effecting a solution of the Black man's problems rests upon American Negroes themselves. They should supply the money and pay the price, make the sacrifice and endure suffering to realize full manhood as Black Men.

Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls.

Black Consciousness seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life.

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years. Black thinkers as far back as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington have done the same.

America always pivots between collective responsibility and the idea that the individual can pull himself up by his bootstraps.

I can't save the world, but if I can share some ideas, people might be able to save themselves.

We are not exercising our democratic rights properly. We need to stop looking for solutions in others.

The new Black doesn't blame other races for our issues.

We are in a movement that must not fade away. The bosses are you. The people in Washington are public servants, and they serve you.

The principal challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain that equality of results will now follow. If we do not, there will be no social peace in the United States for generations.

Not everything can be solved by government.

We're all about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, et cetera - I think that's a harmful mythology, that the choices that we make and the things that we do in our lives are not connected to anything else. So I'd like to help to debunk that.

Obama just announced Americans don't consider themselves victims, or entitled. Actually, the vast majority of Obama supporters believe exactly that. They believe exactly that.

What we, as black people, need to do is we need to worry about our education.

I think, as a black man, I have a responsibility to have knowledge and have an opinion.

The fights for media justice and racial justice have been intertwined since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

We can't sit around waiting for big government, big business, big religion etc. to save us. We need to get informed and take inspired action.

Happily, the days when overt racial discrimination and segregation were championed by social conservatives are long past.