Top 15 Eldridge Cleaver Quotes

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

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

"I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings. They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other. I do not want to "hold" you, I want you to "stay" out of your own need for me."

And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.

You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem.

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

Respect commands itself and it can neither be given nor withheld when it is due.

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

"You are either part of the solution or part of the problem. "
Eldridge Cleaver

Ah, what sights and sounds and pain lie beneath that mist. And we had thought that our hard climb out of that cruel valley led to some cool, green and peaceful, sunlit place — -but it's all jungle here, a wild and savage wilderness that's overrun with ruins. But put on your crown, my Queen, and we will build a New City on these ruins.

But it is not that easy, is it? I seek a lasting relationship, something permanent in a world of change, in which all is transitory, ephemeral, and full of pain.

I may even swagger a little, and, as I read in a book somewhere, 'push myself forward like a train.

I did not know that I had all these feelings inside me. They have never been aroused before. Now they cascade down upon my head and threaten to beat me down to the ground, into the dust.

Too much agreement kills chat.

It takes time and deeds, and this involves trust, it involves making ourselves vulnerable to each other…to become sitting ducks for each other — — and if one of the ducks is shamming, then the sincere duck will pay in pain — -but the deceitful duck, I feel, will be the loser.