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Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.

Steven Biko

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Steven Biko
Age: 30 †
Born: 1946
Born: December 18
Died: 1977
Died: September 12
Activist
Civil Rights Advocate
Politician
Trade Unionist
Writer
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Bantu Stephen Biko
Seek
Marks
Fight
Describing
Started
Forces
Fighting
Towards
Subservient
Force
Committed
Blackness
Use
Merely
Stamp
Black
Road
Emancipation
Mark
Stamps

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The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
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The oneness of community for instance is at the heart of our culture.
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What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. We do not need to apologise for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people.
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Any warning normally implies, even if it is tacit, that there should be changes
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Tradition has it that whenever a group of people has tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security and prestige it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie and accept that it alone is entitled to privilege.
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Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
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A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.
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It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.
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I think the central theme about black society is that it has got elements of a defeated society
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This is white man's integration, an integration based on exploitative values
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In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own
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WOMEN must be at the forefront of nation-building to bring the South African citizenry together and, therefore, develop a whole new ethos of human co-existence
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The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country.
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Sure there are a few good whites just as much as there are a few bad Blacks. However what we are concerned here with is group attitudes and group politics. The exception does not make a lie or the rule - it merely substantiates it.
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I'm going to be me as I am, and you can beat me or jail me or even kill me, but I'm not going to be what you want me to be.
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A community is easily divide when their perception of the same thing is different
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To a large extent the evil-doers have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine a kind of black man who is man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of dehumanization has advanced.
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You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway.
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The essence of politics is to direct oneself to the group which wields power
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I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people.
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