Steven Biko Quotes

Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case.

I have referred to myself as an accidental activist on more than one occasion.

It's important to credit the brave people that take chances to stand up to regimes. They're the star.

Those who today still feel a sense of impotence can do something: they can support Amnesty International. They can help it to stand up for freedom and justice.

As to politics, I am doing what I can for the cause.

To me, David Astor was a freedom fighter. To me, he wasn't just a journalist; he was a freedom fighter.

Personally, I am uneasy about the notion of "a politically engaged university," for reasons I wrote about over 30 years ago, at the height of protest and resistance (reprinted in For Reasons of State).

I am a revolutionary; my life is dedicated to freeing the people.

My job is to confront apathy and confront all the forces that tend to batter each of us down with all kind of oppression, even self-oppression. I consider that the main job of the art that I do- to rattle the cage, wake people up, wake myself up, confront all that would conspire to keep us down.

A little rebellion is a good thing.

The end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom.

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of "I want to tell the people."

Harriet Tubman didn't have strategy meetings or a movement behind her, she was the movement, she was inspired by being sick and tired of the injustice she was experiencing and she knew she had a right to liberty or death, one or the other she was going to have by any means necessary.

Democracy is a life, and involves continual struggle.

If civil disobedience is the way to go about change, than I think a lot of people will be going to San Francisco

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom

Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.

I am not a politician or a public servant. I am still a journeyman actor and a peace and justice activist. I'm a pilgrim trying to win my freedom and serve as best I can in the time I have, with this gift I've been given.

Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

You can Jail a Revolutionary but you can't jail the Revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country, but you can't run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can't murder liberation.

When the people stand up, imperialism trembles.

I'm always happy when I'm protesting.