Assata Shakur Quotes

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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

People, World, Moral

Assata Shakur (2016). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.151, Zed Books Ltd.

357 Copy quote
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Assata Shakur

Fighting, Winning, Support

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.67, Zed Books

321 Copy quote
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

Hero, Giving, Needs

343 Copy quote
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

Needs, Weapons, Construction

343 Copy quote
People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

Assata Shakur

Thinking, People, Tolerance

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.277, Zed Books

364 Copy quote
A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man. If he's not about liberation, if he's not about struggle, if he ain't about building a strong Black family, if he ain't about building a strong Black nation, then he ain't about nothing.

Assata Shakur

Strong, Struggle, Men

353 Copy quote
Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is....never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.

Assata Shakur

Enemy, Fool

260 Copy quote
Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

Assata Shakur

Resistance, Oppression

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.184, Zed Books

193 Copy quote
Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.

Assata Shakur

Strong, Crazy, Weak

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.209, Zed Books

212 Copy quote
Hip Hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young people's political and social consciousness. But just as with any weapon, if you don't know how to use it, if you don't know where to point it, or what you're using it for, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters or brothers.

Assata Shakur

Brother, Powerful, Feet

247 Copy quote
Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

Assata Shakur

Dream, Reality, Opposites

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.275, Zed Books

118 Copy quote
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

War, Lying, Heartless

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.65, Zed Books

202 Copy quote
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

Fighting, Gun, Thinking

184 Copy quote
Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.

Assata Shakur

Moon, Black, Revolutionary

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.67, Zed Books

147 Copy quote
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

Nike, Air, Filters

23 Copy quote
I hate war, and I hate having to struggle. I honestly do because I wish I had been born into a world where it was unnecessary. This context of struggle and being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression. Otherwise I would be a sculptor, or a gardener, carpenter - You know, I would be free to be so much more… I guess part of me or a part of who I am, a part of what I do is being a warrior - a reluctant warrior, a reluctant struggler. But I do it, because I’m committed to life.

Assata Shakur

Hate, War, Struggle

158 Copy quote
The usual way the people are taught to think in amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no relation to any other subject. For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern. It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.

Assata Shakur

Thinking, People, Usual

136 Copy quote
No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.

Assata Shakur

Giving, Needs

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.196, Zed Books

68 Copy quote
We’re taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don’t have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is.

Assata Shakur

Ideas, Enemy, Age

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.167, Zed Books

18 Copy quote
Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other people's freedom as well. The victory of oppressed people anywhere in the world is a victory for Black people. Each time one of imperialism's tentacles is cut off we are closer to liberation.

Assata Shakur

Freedom, Cutting, People

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.282, Zed Books

59 Copy quote
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

School, Skills, Long

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.196, Zed Books

36 Copy quote
Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.

Assata Shakur

Book, College, Practice

147 Copy quote
If you're deaf, dumb, and blind to what's happening in the world, you're under no obligation to do anything. But if you know what's happening and you don't do anything but sit on your ass, then you're nothing but a punk

Assata Shakur

Dumb, World, Blind

Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.222, Zed Books

41 Copy quote
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

Vision, Causes, Honest

62 Copy quote
I don't have to live up to that Superwoman myth. I can cry and be human and lean on people who take care of me. That can be very liberating.

Assata Shakur

People, Care, Cry

98 Copy quote

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Born: July 16, 1947
Occupation: Activist
Cite this Page: Citation

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