Best Quotes from Angela Davis by Angela Y. Davis with Page Numbers

I had to look normal; I could not arouse the suspicion of the attendant in the station where we would have to gas up the car.

Thousands of my ancestors had waited, as I had done, for nightfall to cover their steps, had leaned on one true friend to help them, had felt, as I did, the very teeth of the dogs at their heels.

It would be difficult, but not impossible.

I had to be worthy of them.

The struggle would be difficult, but there was already a hint of victory.

I was almost able to concentrate on the anecdotes Hattie told me about her career as an entertainer and how she had plowed her way through all the discrimination to assert herself as the dancer she wanted to be.

The thought of being indefinitely exiled in some other country was even more horrible than the idea of being locked up in jail.

I had seen more brutality than most people can expect to see in a lifetime.

Even if they did take her to a halfway decent hospital, what would happen to the infant once it was born?

The circumstances that created my hunted state were perhaps a bit more complicated, but not all that different.

"Because of its steeples and gables and peeling paint, the house was said to be haunted."

"My mother always said, love had been ordained by God. White people's hatred of us was neither natural nor eternal."

"It hurt to see us folding in on ourselves, using ourselves as whipping posts because we did not yet know how to struggle against the real cause of our misery."

"What I did, I did quietly, without any fanfare. It seemed to me that if there were hungry children, something was wrong and if I did nothing about it, I would be wrong too."

"The refusal or inability to do something, say something when a thing needed doing or saying, was unbearable."

"All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."

"For the first time, I became acquainted with the notion that there could be an ideal socioeconomic arrangement; that every person could give to the society according to his ability and his talents, and that in turn he could receive material and spiritual aid in accordance with his needs."

"The final words of the Manifesto moved me to an overwhelming desire to throw myself into the communist movement: 'Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.'"

"Images surged up in my mind of Black workers in Birmingham trekking every morning to the steel mills or descending into the mines."

"My ideas about Black liberation were imprecise, and I could not find the right concepts to articulate them; still, I was acquiring some understanding about how capitalism could be abolished."

In the artificial surroundings of an isolated, virtually all-white college campus, I had allowed myself to cultivate this nihilistic attitude. It was as if in order to fight off the unreal quality of my environment, I leaped desperately into another equally unreal mode of living.

It was good to feel part of a movement and once again be participating in rallies, teach-ins, demonstrations.

I found myself constantly thinking about my people in Birmingham, my people in Harlem.

The experiences of the summer still very much alive, I felt older and more confident.

Language was one of those barriers which could be removed easily.

Had they drawn the curtain and bowed to applause, it would have been as if their commitment was simply 'art.' The Cubans continued their dancing, doing a spirited conga right off the stage and into the audience.

Those bomb-wielding racists... wanted to destroy this movement before it became too deeply rooted in our minds and our lives.

My decision to study in Frankfurt had been made in 1964, against the backdrop of relative political tranquility. But by the time I left in the summer of 1965, thousands of sisters and brothers were screaming in the streets of Los Angeles that they had observed the rules of the game long enough, too long.

The slogan 'Black Power' sprang out of a march in Mississippi.

The struggle was a life-nerve; our only hope for survival.

"Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary's life."

"As long as the Black response to racism remained purely emotional, we would go nowhere."

"If you want to understand the meaning of this law, go to the D.A.!"

"Therefore I found it disappointing that the nationalist posture of the Black leaders in London involved a strong resistance to socialism."

"For me, revolution was never an interim 'thing-to-do' before settling down; it was no fashionable club with newly minted jargon..."

"Serious revolutionary work consists of persistent and methodical efforts through a collective of other revolutionaries to organize the masses for action."

"When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime."

"It was clear that the movement’s leadership must push in the direction of socialism."

"There was a natural inclination to identify the enemy as the white man... it would solve nothing in the long run."

"The screams we cover with holy wings, in those days, we shall be terrible."

"Free Angela Davis and all political prisoners!"

"I raised my fists, I was pushed into an elevator that opened into the booking area of the jail... But I could feel them and I felt happy and strong because of them."

"I had to have lawyers who agreed that the case was a political one."

"We therefore had to continually strengthen the people's movement that was our only hope of beating the odds."

"Justice in the United States...the participants in a trial...should not be seen as struggling against one another."

"There was absolutely nothing I had in common with the men sitting around the courtroom circle."

"Unity was the only sure way to carry us both to victory."

"After all, I had been certain that there would not be the flimsiest chance of victory...But I began to understand my own misjudgment."

"What mattered was that I reaffirm my commitment to the fight to free all political prisoners."

"If I could not be satisfied with my freedom alone, they could not be satisfied either."

"Bridges walls turned sideways are bridges."

"We had to appear before this tribunal or be expelled from the university — because we had simply wanted to enjoy the beauty of an autumn day, and had not allowed the rules to inhibit us."

"I never forgot the self-righteous condemnation of that tribunal. They were convinced they had a right to play God, master and mother."

"We were hoping that our instincts were correct about Mrs. Mary Timothy, whose son had been a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war."

"The system was poised against us. That was what had come through so powerfully in Mrs. Hemphill's words."

"The evidence will show that my involvement in the movement to free the Soledad Brothers began long before I had any personal contact with George Jackson."

"There will be no evidence offered by the prosecution over the next few weeks of the exercise by the defendant of her right of free speech and assembly under the First Amendment."

"You will learn that shortly after Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette and George Jackson were indicted, I began to attend public meetings designed to lay the basis for a movement to publicly defend them from the unfounded charges."

"When we heard that the Soledad Brothers were acquitted, we screamed, we hugged each other, we jumped up and down. 'The Soledad Brothers are free.'"

"The principle of survival dictates the annihilation of all that compels us to order our lives around that principle."