Stokely carmichael was an influential civil rights leader who advocated for the advancement of african-americans through various means. His quotes have been widely used by activists and scholars alike to further the cause of civil rights and social justice. Whether it’s his famous phrase, “Black power,” or his thoughts on the need for a unified black identity, carmichael’s words continue to inspire and challenge people to this day. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of stokely carmichael quotesmore notable quotes.
Powerful Stokely Carmichael Quotes
🌐 “The masses don’t shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “Go home and tell your daughters they are beautiful.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.” – Stokely Carmichael
“There is a higher law than the law of government. That’s the law of conscience.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “One does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “I’m convinced that the deck is so stacked that only a certain number can get through. I happened to be one of that certain number. That’s all.” ― Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “In struggle one not only fights against something–injustice, oppression–but one must struggle for something equally real but positive. That’s the other part of the equation.” ― Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.” ― Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “No man can give anybody his freedom.” ― Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “A man is born free.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation’s out of breath. We ain’t running no more.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.” – Stokely Carmichael
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🌐 “The job of the conscious is to make the unconscious conscious.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “The secret of life is to have no fear; it’s the only way to function.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “The knowledge I have now is not the knowledge I had then.” – Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael Quotes On Freedom
🌐 “You may enslave a man after he is born free. And that is in fact what this country does. It enslaves black people after they’re born.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “Poverty is well calculated in this country. And the reason why the poverty program won’t work is because the calculators of poverty are administering it.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “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.” ― Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “We are against the draft. No man has the right to take a man for two years and train him to be a killer. A man should decide what he wants to do with his life.” ― Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “They Head Start, Upward Lift, Bootstrap, and Upward Bound us into white society, ’cause they don’t want to face the real problem which is a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: ’cause he does not have money — period. If you want to get rid of poverty, you give people money — period.” – Stokely Carmichael
“Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they’re built upon racism.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position.” – Stokely Carmichael
🌐 “Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you’re anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.” – Stokely Carmichael
Best Quotes From Stokely Carmichael On Civil Rights
🌐 “Civil rights leaders who, in the past or at present, rely essentially on ‘national sentiment’.”
🌐 “Unlike some other civil rights groups, SNCC saw that such demonstrations were political in character.”
🌐 “It is clear to me that we have to wage a psychological battle on the right for black people to define their own terms; define themselves as they see fit; and organize themselves as they see it.”
🌐 “It doesn’t make a difference, ’cause we’re gonna organize our way, anyway. We gonna do it.”
🌐 “The need for psychological equality is the reason why SNCC today believes that blacks must organize in the black community.”
🌐 “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.”
🌐 “I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.”
🌐 “This is perfectly understandable in terms of the strategy and goals of the older organizations, the concept of the civil rights movement as a kind of liaison between the powerful white community and the dependent black community.”
🌐 “There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.”
🌐 “The call for Black Power was heard by more than a few, blacks and whites, as anti-white, defeatist, and bitterly rejecting the civil rights movement ’s traditional goal of integration.”
Stokely Carmichael Black Power Quotes
🌐 “Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.”
🌐 “The black community perceives the ‘white power structure’ in very concrete terms.”
🌐 “The adoption of the concept of Black Power is one of the most legitimate and healthy developments in American politics and race relations in our time.”
🌐 “Racism is both overt and covert.”
“The creation of new values means the establishment of a society based on free people, not free enterprise.”
🌐 “If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he’s the one who picked up the gun.”
🌐 “But that we are not going to wait for white people to sanction Black Power.”
Stokely Carmichael Racism Quotes
🌐 “In order for America to really live on a basic principle of human relationships a new society must be born. Racism must die.”
🌐 “When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism.”
🌐 “Political modernization—a process which must take place if the society is to be rid of racism.”
🌐 “The problems of the city and of institutional racism are clearly intertwined.”
🌐 “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.”
🌐 “Now we maintain that we cannot afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools.”
🌐 “Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they’re built upon racism.”
🌐 “Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism.”
🌐 “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.”
Stokely Carmichael Quotes On Voting Rights
🌐 “In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”
🌐 “We are going to have to speak to change the foreign policy of this country.”
🌐 “One does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about.”
🌐 “An organization which claims to speak for the needs of a community must speak in the tone of that community.”
🌐 “If we are going to eliminate that for the generation that comes after us, then black people must be seen in positions of power, doing and articulating for themselves.”
🌐 “We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.”
🌐 “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.”
“Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.”
🌐 “The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.”
🌐 “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.”
🌐 “Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States.”
Stokely Carmichael Quotes On United States
🌐 “The black communities of the United States do not export anything except human labor.”
🌐 “Black people in the United States must raise hard questions, questions which challenge the very nature of the society itself: its long-standing values, beliefs and institutions.”
🌐 “This black person is urged to adopt American middle-class standards and values.”
🌐 “Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.”
🌐 “I place my own hope for the United States in the growth of belief among the unqualified that they are in fact qualified: they can articulate and be responsible and hold power.”
🌐 “The tragedy of race relations in the United States is that there is no American Dilemma”
🌐 ” This is not to say that every single white American consciously oppresses black people. He does not need to.”
🌐 “American students are perhaps the most politically unsophisticated students in the world.”
🌐 “The U.S. cannot justify its existence as the policeman of the world any longer. I do not want to be a part of the American pie.”
🌐 “There is a higher law than the law of government. That’s the law of conscience.”
🌐 “The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared people are dead!”
🌐 “The secret of life is to have no fear; it’s the only way to function.”
Important Stokely Carmichael Quotes
🌐 “The white political bosses could rule the black community in the same fashion that Britain ruled the African colonies—by indirect rule”
🌐 “A man is born free.”
🌐 “Yes, it is we who are the hardest workers and the lowest paid.”
🌐 “No man can give anybody his freedom.”
🌐 “The masses don’t shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.”
🌐 “Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation’s out of breath. We ain’t running no more.”
🌐 “If you want to get rid of poverty, you give people money — period.”
Verdict:
Stokely carmichael’s quotes were inspiring, uplifting, and thought-provoking. His words captured the spirit of the civil rights movement and provided hope and direction to many. His legacy continues to live on in the hearts of those who seek to make a difference and stand up for what is right.