Assata Shakur Quotes & Sayings

I'm not quite sure what freedom is, but I know damn well what it ain't. — Assata Shakur

Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. — Assata Shakur

One sticks his fingers in my eyes. I don't know what he has on his fingertips, but whatever it is burns like hell. I think I am gonna be blind forever. He says he will keep doing it until i am completely blind. — Assata Shakur

When the judge learned i was sick and unable to come to kourt, he had a fit. He acted like i had gotten sick just to delay the trial. — Assata Shakur

As far as I was concerned, the Panthers were 'baaaaaad.' The Party was more than bad; it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them. — Assata Shakur

In my case, spirituality has been important to me because at periods in my life there's been very little else that I've had going. I've actually needed to call on, to feel the forces of good in this universe to be able to survive. — Assata Shakur

I own no TV stations, or Radio Stations or Newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on, and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerika. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask, those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media, those of you who believe in true freedom, to publish this statement and to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless. — Assata Shakur

I think that people who want to change this planet have to seriously understand that as human beings we have to work to be good. — Assata Shakur

In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem to far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hard hats and the red necks and the bible belt and the so called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine how the "new left" was talking to those people, much less organizing and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with answers was to on keep studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it because reading that stuff had probably saved my life a million times. — Assata Shakur

I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. — Assata Shakur

Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford. — Assata Shakur

I've tried as much as possible to avoid the standard nine-to-five thing. I've tried to organize my life so that I can move around, change the rhythm and the tempo. — Assata Shakur

When I was a child, if someone had talked to me about buying water, I would have thought it was a joke. — Assata Shakur

To have one's race brutally treated for so many years, even after the end of slavery and segregation, people are going to rise up with violence to attain what they believe is rightfully theirs. The most important thing at this time is raising the awareness of everyone; people need to be educated everywhere about all aspects of racism and how it affects people still today. — Assata Shakur

Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars. — Assata Shakur

Every person that steps up and commits to social change helps solidify the black movement cause. It is not easy for those who fill in the leader role. — Assata Shakur

I think that in order to struggle you have to be creative. In my life, creativity has been something that has sustained me; it awoke my spiritual struggle. — Assata Shakur

I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property. — Assata Shakur

Usually, after a disagreement, they suggested i read this or that, often Marx, Lenin, or Engels. I preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che, or Fidel, but i ended up having to get into Marx and Lenin just to understand a lot of the speeches and stuff Huey Newton was putting out. — Assata Shakur

We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It's not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves. — Assata Shakur

Some people spell "good" with two o's and some people spell it with one ... and there shouldn't be a contradiction between that. — Assata Shakur

When i think of how racist, how Eurocentric our so-called education in amerika is, it staggers my mind. And when i think back to some of those kids who were labeled "troublemakers" and "problem students," i realize that many of them were unsung heroes who fought to maintain some sense of dignity and self-worth. — Assata Shakur

When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people then you are making a statement and the statement is clear — Assata Shakur

After a while, many of the whites asked to be excused before Evelyn even asked them any questions. Most of them preferred to be excused rather than have their feelings toward Black people, Black militants, and Black Panthers questioned and explored. — Assata Shakur

Many of the sisters were Black and poor and from D.C., where every crime is a violation of a federal statute. They were beautiful sisters, serving outrageous sentences for minor offenses. — Assata Shakur

Freedom! you askin me about freedom. I'll be honest with you. I know a whole more about what freedom isn't than about what it is, 'cause I've never been free. I can only share my vision with you of the future, about what freedom is. — Assata Shakur

After i had escaped, the police had so persistently and brutally badgered my mother that she had had a heart attack. What they had done to Evelyn was beyond belief. I understood why Evelyn had reacted to my call the way she did. At one time, Evelyn's office telephone had ten intercepts on it. She and my mother had received phony notes in my handwriting. They had received telephone calls with my voice telling them to "come to the spot and bring some money." They had found electric eyes and all kinds of other devices in and around their houses. — Assata Shakur

I really wanted to know what happens in a place that is trying to build socialism, that's trying to construct some form of social justice. That's trying to feed people, to make health care and education a right. — Assata Shakur

If we are not committed to saving this earth we will be buying designer air filters and gas masks with little Nike swishes on them. — Assata Shakur

I think that any time anybody gets rid of oppression, intervention, exploitation, cruelty - that's positive. — Assata Shakur

Hooked up with the nazis were the manson family women, sandra good and linda "squeaky" froame. Sandra had been sentenced to fifteen years for threatening the lives of business executives and government officials, and froame was serving a life sentence for attempting to kill president gerald ford. They were like the Bobbsey twins and clear out of their minds. — Assata Shakur

A woman's place is in the struggle. — Assata Shakur

I had to adjust to living in a Third World country, which means that things people in the U.S. take for granted-like hot running water whenever you turn on the tap-are not always available. — Assata Shakur

I miss friends and family. If it weren't for visits from old friends and other African Americans I meet who come to Cuba, I'd probably be in some kind of time warp. — Assata Shakur

The abnormal, the sick, the vicious have become more and more interwoven into the violent culture of the United States. Into the way news is seen, into the way movies are seen. — Assata Shakur

A lot of contemporary American culture makes its way to this county. Cuba is not some gray, isolated backwater. This is a happening place. — Assata Shakur

Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along. — Assata Shakur

Hip Hop can be a very effective way to reach young people and teach them about current political and social issues. — Assata Shakur

The real reason Cuba poses a threat has nothing to do with my being here or anyone else being here. It's because Cuba is an example of a country that is actively fighting against imperialist domination and insists on its own right to self-determination and sovereignty. — Assata Shakur

The world, in spite of oppression, is a beautiful place. — Assata Shakur

The questions we submitted and others that the prosecutor submitted. After we went through the answers we were to pick or eliminate jurors, asking additional questions as needed. Some of the answers were so contradictory and such a study on the level of racism in amerika that it would take a book just to report on them. In one hundred percent of the cases we were able to tell whether the prospective juror was Black, white, or "other," just by reading the answers. — Assata Shakur

Tourism has affected Cuba, because tourists come and they bring racist, sexist ideas. They bring a whole vision that there are rich people all over the world and that's the way it should be. — Assata Shakur

No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free. — Assata Shakur

I think that one of the great things that the Cuban revolution has done is preserve history. — Assata Shakur

I realized that I was connected to Africa. I wasn't just a Colored girl. I was part of a whole world that wanted a better life. I'm part of a majority and not a minority. My life has been a life of growth. If you're not growing, you're not going to understand real love. If you're not reaching out to help others then you're shrinking. My life has been active. I'm not a spectator — Assata Shakur

The first part of planning is to believe that you can put that plan into practise. — Assata Shakur

People ask me if I miss the States. I miss African Americans. But not the U.S. government or all the things they put me through. I miss African American culture, our speech, dance and cooking. — Assata Shakur

Every day there were three shifts of police. When they changed shifts, the two troopers would salute the sergeant. Some saluted an army salute, but others saluted like the nazis did in Germany. They held their hands in front of them and clicked their heels. — Assata Shakur

My experience in the United States was living in a society that was very much at war with itself, that was very alienated. People felt not part of a community, but like isolated units that were afraid of interaction, of contact, that were lonely. — Assata Shakur

I trust Cuba as a principled country. Cuba's strength is that it has been steadfast in its commitment to the principles of liberation, freedom, of resistance to the kind of institutionalized terrorism that the United States government does every day. — Assata Shakur

They went up against white mobs, water hoses, vicious dogs, the Ku Klux Klan, trigger-happy nightstick-wielding police, armed only with their belief in justice and their desire for freedom. — Assata Shakur

For me personally Cuba has been a healing state. When I first got here I had no sense that I had to heal or anything. When you're struggling for your life and you're in the midst of things, you don't feel all the blows. — Assata Shakur

Imperialism is the underlying motor of racism. The underlying reason that racism keeps on being promoted in all of its various forms. — Assata Shakur

I Believe In The Fire Of Love And The Sweat Of Truth — Assata Shakur

I advocate revolutionary changes ... an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty — Assata Shakur

Are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger? To sacrifice to end colonialism? To end neo-colonialism? To end racism? To end sexism? — Assata Shakur

Northern whites were more than happy at the prospect of Black people fighting in the war. A popular verse published in the newspapers of the day reflected the sentiment of many Northerners: Some say it is a burnin' shame To make the naygurs fight An' that the trade o' bein' kilt Belongs but to the white; But as for me upon me sowl, So liberal are we here, I'll let Sambo be murthered in place o' meself On every day in the year. — Assata Shakur

Fascist governments do not permit revolutionary or progressive operation groups to exist, no matter how peaceful or nonviolent they are. It doesn't matter whether the fascist government simply outlawed the groups like in Nazi Germany or mounts a counterintelligence campaign to destroy opposition groups like in the U.S. — Assata Shakur

Fidel, in a speech, had told the people, We are all Afro-Cubans, from the very lightest to the very darkest. — Assata Shakur

I knew i didn't know what the hell communism was, and yet i'd been dead set against it. Just like when you're a little kid and they get you to believe in the bogeyman. You don't know what the hell the bogeyman is, but you hate him and you're scared of him. — Assata Shakur

It never occurred to me that anyone would name a nuclear missile "Peacekeeper". It never occurred to me that thousands of people would be killed in the name of "peace-keeping". — Assata Shakur

I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port — Assata Shakur

There is a down side to everything if you don't understand what the consequences of what you are saying in your music you could possibly end up getting yourself killed or hurting other people because of your carelessness. — Assata Shakur

I have been a political activist most of my life and many groups have attempted to label me as a criminal because of my outspoken beliefs. I am not a criminal and I have never been one. — Assata Shakur

My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle. — Assata Shakur

When someone asked me what communism was, i opened my mouth to answer, then realized i didn't have the faintest idea. My image of a communist came from a cartoon. It was a spy with a black trench coat and a black hat pulled down over his face, slinking around corners. In school, we were taught that communists worked in salt mines, that they weren't free, that everybody wore the same clothes, and that no one owned anything. — Assata Shakur

The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody. — Assata Shakur

A poster of the massacre at My Lai, picturing women and children lying clumped together in a heap, their bodies riddled with bullets, hung on my wall as a daily reminder of the brutality in the world. — Assata Shakur

I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government's policy towards people of color. — Assata Shakur

I can't do nothin except try to find cloud nine. — Assata Shakur

The methods of peaceful protests are not capable of being effective, because in reality most people pay little attention to things that are not abrasive. — Assata Shakur

The capper came when the manager of the bank came forward to testify in my behalf. He said that i was definitely not the woman who robbed the bank and that the robber was a different height and weight from mine. — Assata Shakur

Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. — Assata Shakur

My energy just couldn't stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of struggle, and i wanted to dance. — Assata Shakur

I've always been a student of different ways of looking at the world, different religions. That's been part of my survival mechanism, and also part of my curiosity as a person. — Assata Shakur

We're living in a very tricky world, and unless we become analytical and expose the tricknology, people will become sucked into that. It is very easy, it is very, very easy. — Assata Shakur

I wondered how i would feel going into some museum and seeing the houses and stolen artifacts of my people stuck away in some exhibition hall. As i spoke i realized that most of the "history" i had been taught about the Indians was probably lies invented by the white man. — Assata Shakur

At the time, Alcatraz had been taken over by Native Americans who were protesting against a long series of broken treaties, genocidal policies, and racist exploitation. — Assata Shakur

We had to learn that we're beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active — Assata Shakur

White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear. — Assata Shakur

I think it's really hard to plan if you don't believe you can implement those plans. — Assata Shakur

I had grown up believing the slaves hadn't fought back. I remember feeling ashamed when they talked about slavery in school. — Assata Shakur

Schools in amerika are interested in brainwashing people with amerikanism, giving them a little bit of education, and training them in skills needed to fill the positions the capitalist system requires. As long as we expect amerika's schools to educate us, we will remain ignorant. — Assata Shakur

Since i was the only Black woman sitting in the defendant's chair, of course he identified me. We protested the procedure, but the judge admitted his testimony anyway. We finally did arrange for a lineup, and, of course, the other so-called witnesses picked out another woman. — Assata Shakur

from Assata's time cooking at the free breakfast program for kids:

One little girl came over to me and tapped me on the back.

'There's something wrong with your pancakes.'

'What's wrong with them?'

'They don't taste good. — Assata Shakur

I worked, studied, mothered and continued to be an activist. I found that Cuba was much different from the US; its government was genuinely trying to erase racism. — Assata Shakur

He told the jury that i was hiding the fact that i had big fat arms like the woman who was shown robbing the bank, that i was concealing my arms because i had not worn a sleeveless dress in kourt (the trial was held in the middle of January). As he was talking, i politely rolled up my sleeves right there in the kourtroom, exposing my very thin arms. — Assata Shakur

The police photographer asks, Don't you wanna give us a smile? Come on. Give us a smile. — Assata Shakur

We have to have a vision of the world we want to make in 100 years. And maybe when we have that vision, when we convince enough people that that is a realistic vision, and that the opposite vision is basically that if we don't do something in this 100 years, a hundred years from now this world is gonna be so destroyed, so raped and ravished that we won't HAVE much of a world to save. — Assata Shakur

Cubans understand that theirs is a country that provides sanctuary for people fleeing oppression. As a nation, they are very proud of this stance. They don't care how much the U.S. government badgers or attacks them. — Assata Shakur

I believe in life. And I have seen the death parade — Assata Shakur

I couldn't see how we could seriously struggle without having a strong sense of collectivity, without being responsible FOR each other and TO each other. — Assata Shakur

Several years later, after the Freedom of Information Act was passed, it was revealed that Cotton had been working undercover for the police. — Assata Shakur

I think that, like many sisters, I was raised to be a Superwoman. I am a serious woman, and I want to be taken seriously. — Assata Shakur

There's something nice about being able to go to sleep at night saying "You know, tomorrow I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that ... " I think that being an activist on this planet is a privilege and a pleasure. — Assata Shakur

Too many people in the U.S. support death and destruction without being aware of it. They indirectly support the killing our people without ever having to look at the corpses — Assata Shakur

Nobody could have possibly known that the FBI had sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, 'signed' by the Panther 21, criticizing Huey Newton's leadership... no one could have known that the FBI's cointelpro was attempting to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular, and the Black Liberation movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics. — Assata Shakur

Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so factionalized. I felt that instead of fighting against a common enemy, they wasted time quarreling with each other about who has the right line.
Although i respected the work and political positions of many groups on the left, i felt it was necessary for Black people to come together and organize our own structures and our own politcal party ...
I felt, and still feel, that it is necessary for Black revolutionaries to come together, analyze our history, our present condition, and to define ourselves and our struggle. — Assata Shakur

The U. S. is becoming more hostile to Black people and other people of color. Racism is running rampant and xenophobia is on the rise — Assata Shakur

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them. — Assata Shakur