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To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you.

John Henrik Clarke

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John Henrik Clarke
Age: 83 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 1
Died: 1998
Died: July 16
Historian
Writer
Union Springs
Alabama
John Clarke
Wall
Conqueror
Must
Hold
Walls
Needs
Control
Controlled
Think
History
Chains
Thinking
Culture
Ashamed
People
Makes
Prison
Firsts
Shame
Regard
First

More quotes by John Henrik Clarke

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Eat bread. You don't know if it's been polluted. Drink water, you don't know whether it's been polluted. So living is a test.
John Henrik Clarke
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Man's attitude towards the universe and his opinion of the universe predates the scientific probe of the universe.
John Henrik Clarke
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I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
John Henrik Clarke
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The African had opinions about the universe that eventually turned out to be true.
John Henrik Clarke
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I am a nationalist, and a Pan-Africanist, first and foremost. I was well grounded in history before ever taking a history course. I did not spend much formal time in school - I had to work.
John Henrik Clarke
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Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the hand maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds.
John Henrik Clarke
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I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
John Henrik Clarke
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Each generation must assume the responsibility of securing their manhood, their womanhood, the definition of their being on earth that in the final analysis is nationhood.
John Henrik Clarke
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When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, convinced me that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with 'Georgia on My Mind.'
John Henrik Clarke
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People rise and fall on the basis of the makings of institutions.
John Henrik Clarke
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The white woman has never had the co-equal status that the African woman has had.
John Henrik Clarke
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All life is a test one way or the other.
John Henrik Clarke
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We're in a world of propaganda. Some of it is all to effective.
John Henrik Clarke
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Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world.
John Henrik Clarke
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We 've lost something else: the relationship between men and women.
John Henrik Clarke
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It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa has been written by conquerors, foreigners, missionaries and adventurers. The Egyptians left the best record of their history written by local writers.
John Henrik Clarke
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We never see ourselves as heroes and sometimes when we do it is a hero that has made a fortune as a clown or a boxer. And there is no lasting value in either one of those.
John Henrik Clarke
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My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, the in your imagination God suppose to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people.
John Henrik Clarke
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I don't attend any particular church now. I don't believe in denominations, nor do I believe in organized religion.
John Henrik Clarke
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You shouldn't bear humiliations.
John Henrik Clarke