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People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows.

Assata Shakur

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Assata Shakur
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: July 14
Activist
Jamaica
Queens
Joanne Deborah Byron
Oppression
People
Tolerance
Grows
Less
Used
Anything
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Assata Shakur

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Cuba has its own moral system and priorities. That's what keeps it going, the belief that the country can control its own destiny.
Assata Shakur
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My fantasy of Cuba was that everybody was going to be going around looking like Fidel, with green uniforms - and it was very different from my vision of how Cuba was going to be.
Assata Shakur
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The real reason Cuba poses a threat has nothing to do with my being here or anyone else being here. It's because Cuba is an example of a country that is actively fighting against imperialist domination and insists on its own right to self-determination and sovereignty.
Assata Shakur
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Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other people's freedom as well. The victory of oppressed people anywhere in the world is a victory for Black people. Each time one of imperialism's tentacles is cut off we are closer to liberation.
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
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The U.S. doesn't recognize the laws of Cuba. They can kidnap anybody and bring them back to the States to face the so-called justice system. There's no telling what the U.S. government will do to me. I'm in constant danger I guess I've gotten used to it.
Assata Shakur
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I had to adjust to living in a Third World country, which means that things people in the U.S. take for granted-like hot running water whenever you turn on the tap-are not always available.
Assata Shakur
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I think it's really hard to plan if you don't believe you can implement those plans.
Assata Shakur
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Being in Cuba has allowed me to live in a society that is not at war with itself. There is a sense of community. It's a given in Cuba that, if you fall down, the person next to you is going to help you get up.
Assata Shakur
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I think anybody who is honestly struggling against racism must struggle against imperialism and vice versa.
Assata Shakur
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A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man.
Assata Shakur
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Being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression, otherwise I would have been free to be so much more.
Assata Shakur
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To become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.
Assata Shakur
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My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle.
Assata Shakur
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If you're deaf, dumb, and blind to what's happening in the world, you're under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what's happening and you don't do anything but sit on your ass, then you're nothing but a punk
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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i Believe In The Fire Of Love And The Sweat Of Truth
Assata Shakur
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We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It's not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.
Assata Shakur
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Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.
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