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Respect commands itself and can neither be given nor withheld when it is due.

Eldridge Cleaver

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Eldridge Cleaver
Age: 62 †
Born: 1935
Born: August 31
Died: 1998
Died: May 1
Civil Rights Advocate
Politician
Writer
Wabbaseka
Arkansas
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver
Given
Withheld
Withholding
Commands
Dues
Command
Neither
Respect
Inspirational

More quotes by Eldridge Cleaver

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The myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde.
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I have taken an oath in my heart to oppose communism until the day I die.
Eldridge Cleaver
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Too much agreement kills a chat.
Eldridge Cleaver
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The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
Eldridge Cleaver
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The paper tiger hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.
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I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings. They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other. I do not want to hold you, I want you to stay out of your own need for me.
Eldridge Cleaver
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The most revolutionary statement in history is Love thine enemy
Eldridge Cleaver
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History could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and title graven red in human blood.
Eldridge Cleaver
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The object is for everyone to do their own thing, but the thing is to make one's thing the Revolution.
Eldridge Cleaver
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The racist conscience of America is such that murder does not register as murder really, unless the victim is white... blacks knew that white blood is the coin of freedom in a land where for four hundred years black blood has been shed unremarked and with impunity.
Eldridge Cleaver
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All the gods are dead except the god of war.
Eldridge Cleaver
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Pig power in America was infuriating, but pig power in the communist framework was awesome and unaccountable.
Eldridge Cleaver
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With all its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world.
Eldridge Cleaver
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If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
Eldridge Cleaver
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You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.
Eldridge Cleaver
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I have lived those lines and I know that if I had not been apprehended I would have slit some white throats.
Eldridge Cleaver
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The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.
Eldridge Cleaver
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But it is not that easy, is it? I seek a lasting relationship, something permanent in a world of change, in which all is transitory, ephemeral, and full of pain.
Eldridge Cleaver
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In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Eldridge Cleaver
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Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.
Eldridge Cleaver