Max Roach Quotes

I've learned that for Indian people, the opportunity for us to succeed is very slim. So acting was a great tool for that. And in the process of learning about my culture, I've learned how to connect myself again to my ancestors.

There is a wind of nationalism and freedom blowing round the world, and blowing as strongly in Asia as elsewhere.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.

We black women are the single group in the West intact. And anybody can see we're pretty shaky. We are, however (all praises), the only group that derives its identity from itself.

We have to work at decolonizing our mentality and achieving happiness within the limits of sacrifice we should be willing to make. We have to recondition our people to accept themselves as they are, to not be ashamed of their real situation, to be satisfied with it, to glory in it, even

This will arguably be the third great revolution of America, if we can prove that we literally can live without having a dominant European culture.

If people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious. And that is the chief reason that every person who is gay should join some gay organization. Because he must prove to the world that he cares about his own freedom.

We're always learning. We're all in the process of decolonizing ourselves - removing all the parts of us that are sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist. I mean, everybody in society needs to be in this process because everybody's been brought up in a misogynist, racist, homophobic, transphobic culture.

But I am more than a name. More than they tell me

Representation is a crucial location of struggle for any exploited and oppressed people asserting subjectivity and decolonization of the mind.

What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings. It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on

. . . no Black woman can become an intellectual without decolonizing her mind.

The greatest difficulty we have faced is the neocolonial way of thinking that exists in this country. We were colonized by a country, France, that left us with certain habits. For us, being successful in life, being happy, meant trying to live as they do in France, like the richest of the French.

And wouldn't change by the change, or the game, or the fame, when he came, in the game, he made his own name

You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.

All of us somehow felt that the next battleground was going to be culture. We all felt somehow that our culture had been stolen from us-by commercial forces, by advertising agencies, by TV broadcasters. It felt like we were no longer singing our songs and telling stories, and generating our culture from the bottom up, but now we were somehow being spoon-fed this commercial culture top down.

If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive

If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy . . . to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous . . . let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

Go on saying, I am free. Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, I am bound. Dehypnotize the whole thing.

I will no longer allow anyone to manipulate my mind and control my life in the name of love.

One of the things I had to really wrap my head around is I have no control over what people call me: advocate, activist, gay, Filipino, undocumented person, gay person with an Asian face and Latino name.

The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.