Charles B. Rangel Quotes

The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us our hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

Riot is the voice of the unheard.

Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?

It is so obvious for the under-privileged to challenge the privileged, saying, 'How can you have something over me?' as opposed to the privileged person saying, 'How can we have something over the rest?' I find the latter more exciting.

But revolutionary is not an acceptable term to those who benefit from, and deny at the same time, the savage exploitativeness of the social system.

In terms of the revolution, I believe that the revolution will be a revolution of dispossessed people in this country: that's the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican American, the American Indian, and black people.

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, what shall be done with the free negro?

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.

Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

For a free country to continue thriving, there have to be regular reforms, because any society, any economy that stays in place, you're going to see repeated attempts to exploit the openings for twisting policy to the advantage of those who already have wealth and power.

In America, the dreamers, the disabled and the disadvantaged are not left to defend themselves, alone in their struggles.

Those who suffer are not those at the top, but are the less privileged members of society.

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected – those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! – and listens to their testimony.

Oligarchy is to the advantage of the rich. Democracy to the advantage of the poor.

The state is no more than a machine for oppression of one class by another. This is as true of democracy as it is of monarchy.

In the last era of the [civil rights] movement, the disenfranchised were the blacks, the colored. Now the disenfranchised are the have-nots, the unemployed, the hungry.

The First Law of Class Warfare: Once inequalities develop, the upper classes can, with relative ease, drastically reduce the probability of success for any equalizing challenges to the system.

Do the rhetorical quarrels of bourgeois political parties have anything to do with the interests of the humble and downtrodden?

One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and ‘I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for which I am prepared to die for.

We cannot rebuild the American Dream here at home by catering to the voices of the privileged and powerful.

The only part of my mother's experience that still gets to me is the way she and people like her were looked down upon for asking America to be America, for asking for full and equal participation in our democracy.

You don't fight injustice by asking to become part of the system that committed the injustice against you in the first place. That's like a freed slave striving to become a slave owner.