Quote

As far as I was concerned, the Panthers were 'baaaaaad.' The Party was more than bad it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them.

Assata Shakur

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Assata Shakur
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 14
Activist
Jamaica
Queens
Joanne Deborah Byron
Made
Party
Onto
Long
Black
California
Panthers
People
Back
Defense
Audacity
Look
Bear
Rifles
Self
Bears
Demanding
Looks
Concerned
Sheer
Take
Walking
Floor
Right
Arms
Senate

More quotes by Assata Shakur

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I can't do nothin except try to find cloud nine.
Assata Shakur
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I had grown up at a time when people were being lynched, being attacked with water hoses. Becoming active and learning a different way of viewing my life was a healthy reaction to what I was seeing every day.
Assata Shakur
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I worked, studied, mothered and continued to be an activist. I found that Cuba was much different from the US its government was genuinely trying to erase racism.
Assata Shakur
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Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford.
Assata Shakur
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In the long run, the people are our only appeal. The only ones who can free us are ourselves.
Assata Shakur
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People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom.
Assata Shakur
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I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don't mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people.
Assata Shakur
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Black Revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. We are shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quetin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us.
Assata Shakur
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The abnormal, the sick, the vicious have become more and more interwoven into the violent culture of the United States. Into the way news is seen, into the way movies are seen.
Assata Shakur
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The US has attacked countries like Grenada, Panama, Libya... the list of victims of US terrorism is almost infinite. And the US government's participation in torture, whether in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile... is well-documented and widely known.
Assata Shakur
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I must confess that waltzes do not move me, I guess I hummed the blues too early, and spent too many midnights out wailing to the rain.
Assata Shakur
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People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the whites only signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery.
Assata Shakur
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I miss friends and family. If it weren't for visits from old friends and other African Americans I meet who come to Cuba, I'd probably be in some kind of time warp.
Assata Shakur
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My experience in the United States was living in a society that was very much at war with itself, that was very alienated. People felt not part of a community, but like isolated units that were afraid of interaction, of contact, that were lonely.
Assata Shakur
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When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.
Assata Shakur
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Every person that steps up and commits to social change helps solidify the black movement cause. It is not easy for those who fill in the leader role.
Assata Shakur
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Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.
Assata Shakur
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It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.
Assata Shakur
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Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.
Assata Shakur
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People think that in order for something to work, it has to be complicated, but a lot of times the opposite is true. We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice.
Assata Shakur