Top 18 Stokely Carmichael Quotes

It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.

Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation’s out of breath. We ain’t running no more.

I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.

One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.

Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.

The knowledge I have now is not the knowledge I had then.

We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn’t because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it’s not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.

Integration is a man’s ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.

We are revolutionaries.

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

There is a higher law than the law of government. That’s the law of conscience.

No man can given anybody his freedom.

The secret of life is to have no fear; it’s the only way to function.

Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they’re built upon racism.

The masses don’t shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.

A man is born free.

The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.