Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Life
Manhood
Roads
Cowardice
Loss
American
White
Black
Mainland
Men
Subservience

More quotes by Amiri Baraka

Image
Warriors are poets and poems and all the loveliness here in the worlds.
Amiri Baraka
Image
James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.
Amiri Baraka
Image
There is no depth to education without art.
Amiri Baraka
Image
In America, black is a country.
Amiri Baraka
Image
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
Image
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you
Amiri Baraka
Image
A man is either free or he is not.
Amiri Baraka
Image
& love is an evil word. Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean? An evol word.
Amiri Baraka
Image
Hope is delicate suffering.
Amiri Baraka
Image
What will be / the sacred words?
Amiri Baraka
Image
A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
Amiri Baraka
Image
I'd say I'm a revolutionary optimist. I believe that the good guys -the people- are going to win.
Amiri Baraka
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The films of Warhol, when they are about anything are about sucking people off. This can be high art, to people who are interested in sucking people off. But that will not liberate Black people.
Amiri Baraka
Image
Lately, I've become accustomed to the way The ground opens up and envelopes me Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Amiri Baraka
Image
Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.
Amiri Baraka
Image
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
Image
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