Stokely Carmichael Quotes

#BlackLivesMatter is about black pride and black power and standing up against a world that tries to annihilate us.

Black Power alone is no more insurance against social injustice than white power.

I said, "If I was a Negro girl-" He placed his fingers across my lips so I tasted his saltiness. "We can't think of changing our skin," he said. "Change the world-that's how we gotta think."

Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example.

MLK, Jr. taught me how to say no to segregation, and I can hear him saying now... when you straighten up your back, no man can ride you. He said stand up straight and say no to racial discrimination.

If we're united, I wouldn't care about a White school board getting me a little something. The hell with the school board; that's the White supremacy board and the White supremacy board wants you reading stupid books rooted in the idea of White supremacy. I don't want a thing to do with White supremacy.

The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead!

At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

Neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical, that promise success .... Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties.... Let your motto be resistance, resistance, resistance!

The Ballot or the Bullet

The Black Panther Party stood up and said that we don't care what anybody says. We don't think fighting fire with fire is best; we think you fight fire with water best.

Where is the raised voice of black America? Why are we mute?

I've never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man's primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man's interest is to make money, to exploit.

It's not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.

If you read the story of slavery and see the part that the Uncle Tom played in the plantation, and then you see how the white man today has changed his tactics, but he still occupies the same position, in that same context you find Uncle Tom. He has changed his tactics but he still occupies the same position.

We blacks had problems in the '60s and we solved them by marching. We've still got problems - let's march.

If we want to do more than just end mass incarceration—if we want to put an end to the history of racial caste in America—we must lay down our racial bribes, join hands with people of all colors who are not content to wait for change to trickle down, and say to those who would stand in our way: Accept all of us or none.

Young people are capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and raising the banners of freedom.

Tommy moved on. "Lash, your people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. It's time to strike back. Look, you don't have your MBA yet - they haven't completely juiced you of your usefulness yet. Would Martin Luther King back down from this challenge? Malcolm X? James Brown? Don't you have a dream? Don't you feel good, like you knew that you would, now?

I don't trust any white man who teaches Negroes to turn the other cheek or to be nonviolent, which means to be defenseless in the face of a very brutal, criminal enemy. No. That's my yardstick for measuring whites.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

People have a right to violence, to rebel, to fight back.

We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.