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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
White
Picks
Black
Carry
Rotten
Feelings
Parts
Bullshit
May
Sweet
Meat
Take
Consciousness
Useful
People
Leave
Bitter
Alone
Apart
Dies
Pick

More quotes by Amiri Baraka

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God is man idealized.
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The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.
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Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.
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I am a soul in the world: in the world of my soul the whirled light from the day the sacked land of my father.
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.
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Thought is more important than art....To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.
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.
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A man is either free or he is not.
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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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James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.
Amiri Baraka
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An evil word it is/ This Love.
Amiri Baraka
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Smile, jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew...I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured
Amiri Baraka
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What will be / the sacred words?
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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what is lost because it is most precious what is most precious because it is lost
Amiri Baraka
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Back home the black women are all beautiful
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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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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In America, black is a country.
Amiri Baraka
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To name something is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass.
Amiri Baraka