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People rise and fall on the basis of the makings of institutions.

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
Makings
Basis
Bases
Rise
Institutions
Fall
People

More quotes by 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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If you expect the present day school system to give history to you, you are dreaming. This, we have to do ourselves. The Chinese didn't go out in the world and beg people to teach Chinese studies or let them teach Chinese studies. The Japanese didn't do that either. People don't beg other people to restore their history they do it themselves.
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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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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Clowns don't build institutions, nor do boxers.
John Henrik Clarke
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If I lead the field in any way, it is in the area of curricula development, study guides and other teaching materials.
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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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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The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word 'Africa.' According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe.
John Henrik Clarke
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In a collective society, everybody's business is everybody's business.
John Henrik Clarke
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My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together.
John Henrik Clarke
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In the African matrilineal society, the lineage of the bloodline comes down through the female side. The Arabs who invaded East Africa and other parts of Africa reversed it to the patrilineal where everything comes down through the male side and the woman has no basic rights except that which the male is willing to grant her.
John Henrik Clarke
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I say if black people don't unite and begin to support themselves, their communities and their families, they might as well begin to go out of business as a people. Nobody's going to have any mercy. And nobody's going to have any compunction about making slaves out of them.
John Henrik Clarke
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Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'
John Henrik Clarke
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I think many times we charge the Lord for things we can do ourselves. If only we realized how well we have been equipped.
John Henrik Clarke
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I have no faith in much organized religion because I think it's by a bunch of hypocrites and practiced by a bunch of hypocrites. They don't mean what they say because all of them are in the slave trade one way or the other.
John Henrik Clarke
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What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.
John Henrik Clarke
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The role of religions in the domination and destruction of African civilizations was ruthless... Islam was as guilty as all the rest.
John Henrik Clarke
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When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment.
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