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When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone.

Amiri Baraka

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Amiri Baraka
Age: 20 †
Born: 1934
Born: October 7
Died: 1914
Died: January 9
Critic
Essayist
Journalist
Music Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Imamu Amear Baraka
LeRoi Jones
Everett LeRoi Jones
Alone
Apart
Dies
Pick
White
Picks
Black
Carry
Rotten
Feelings
Parts
Bullshit
May
Sweet
Meat
Take
Consciousness
Useful
People
Leave
Bitter

More quotes by Amiri Baraka

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If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist.
Amiri Baraka
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from the slave ship to the citizenship we faced a lot of bullship
Amiri Baraka
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And now each night, I count the stars. And each night I get the same number. And when the stars won't come to be counted, I count the holes they leave.
Amiri Baraka
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A system that warehouses people is not the cure for social ills
Amiri Baraka
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All thinking people oppose terrorism both domestic & international but one should not be used to cover the other
Amiri Baraka
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The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it.
Amiri Baraka
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Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.
Amiri Baraka
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There is no depth to education without art.
Amiri Baraka
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The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is … political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.
Amiri Baraka
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You can't be an American without being related to other Americans.
Amiri Baraka
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To name something is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass.
Amiri Baraka
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I am inside someone who hates me. I look out from his eyes. Smell what fouled tunes come in to his breath. Love his wretched women.
Amiri Baraka
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If you are black, the only roads into the mainland of American life are through subservience, cowardice, and loss of manhood. These are the white man's roads.
Amiri Baraka
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A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people what to do with their money.
Amiri Baraka
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The torture of being the unseen object, and the constantly observed subject.
Amiri Baraka
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In America, black is a country.
Amiri Baraka
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I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with - ... namely America... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things.
Amiri Baraka
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An evil word it is/ This Love.
Amiri Baraka
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Back home the black women are all beautiful
Amiri Baraka
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Art is whatever makes you proud to be human.
Amiri Baraka