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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
Force
Committed
Blackness
Use
Merely
Stamp
Black
Road
Emancipation
Mark
Stamps
Seek
Marks
Fight
Describing
Started
Forces
Fighting
Towards
Subservient

More quotes by Steven Biko

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Black Consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating Black people black.
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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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We are experiencing new problems every day and whatever we do adds to the richness of our cultural heritage as long as it has man as its centre
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The essence of politics is to direct oneself to the group which wields power
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It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality.
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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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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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A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.
Steven Biko
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I would like to remind the black ministry and indeed all black people that God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people's problems on earth.
Steven Biko
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The system concedes nothing without demand, for it formulates its very method of operation on the basis that the ignorant will learn to know, the child will grow into an adult and therefore demands will begin to be made. It gears itself to resist demands in whatever way it sees fit.
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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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This is white man's integration, an integration based on exploitative values
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Any warning normally implies, even if it is tacit, that there should be changes
Steven Biko
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The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steven Biko
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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.
Steven Biko
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You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway.
Steven Biko
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The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.
Steven Biko
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I think the central theme about black society is that it has got elements of a defeated society
Steven Biko
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In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own
Steven Biko
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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
Steven Biko