Eldridge Cleaver Quotes

Malcolm X had a special meaning for black convicts. A former prisoner himself, he had risen from the lowest depths to great heights. For this reason he was a symbol of hope, a model for thousands of black convicts who found themselves trapped in the vicious PPP cycle: prison-parole-prison.

Americans are becoming increasingly polarized right and left, with the great body of the people in the middle confused and, sometimes to mask their confusion, feigning indifference.

My slogan?

PUT A BLACK FINGER ON THE NUCLEAR TRIGGER.

400 years of docility, of being calm, cool and collected under stress and strain would go to prove that I was the man for the job, that I would not panic in a crisis and push the button.

You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.

"Take the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. I remember as a child how I used to choke up every morning "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Now it didn't say, "I pledge allegiance to racism, to capitalism, and to neo­colonialism, and J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Nixon, .and Ronald Reagan, and Mace, and billy clubs and dead niggers on the street shot by pigs." I mean it didn't say that shit, you see."

The police department and the armed forces are the two arms of the power structure, the muscles of control and enforcement. They have deadly weapons with which to inflict pain on the human body. They know how to bring about horrble deaths. They have clubs with which to beat the body and the head. They have bullets and guns with which to tear holes in the flesh, to smash bones, to disable and kill. They use force, to make you do what the deciders have decided you must do.

Somehow I arrived at the conclusion that, as a matter of principle, it was of paramount importance for me to have an antagonistic, ruthless attitude toward white women. The term outlaw appealed to me and at the time my parole date was drawing near, I considered myself to be mentally free - I was an "outlaw." I had stepped outside of the white man's law, which I repudiated with scorn and self-satisfaction. I became a law unto myself- my own legislature, my own supreme court, my own executive.

If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.

Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man's law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women - and this point, I believe was the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman. I felt I was getting revenge. From the site of the act of rape, consternation spreads outwardly in concentric circles. I wanted to send waves of consternation throughout the white race.

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

If God himself wills such misery on people whom I love, then I say I will deal with him

Five years ago, even the most audacious visionary would not have dared predict the slashing do-or-die desperation and the sizzling up-tempo beat which has exploded into our politics, into our daily conversation, and into our nightmares and dreams.

Revolutionary power grows out of the lips of a pussy

What we're saying today is that you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

We shall have our manhood. We shall have it or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it.