Quotes about Struggle

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then as I still expect today

These negroes aren't asking for no nation. They wanna crawl back on the plantation.

Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back--and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

A thousand ways every day, the white man is telling you You can't live here, you can't enter here, you can't eat here, drink here, walk here, work here, you can't ride here, you can't play here, you can't study here. Haven't we seen enough to see that he has no plan to *unite* with you?

The hardest test I ever faced in my life was praying.

If you are born in America with a black skin, you're in prison

Under the pitiful misapprehension that it would make them better, these Hill Negroes were breaking their backs trying to imitate white people.

Always, every now and then, I had given her a hard time, just to keep her in line. Every once in a while a woman seems to need, in fact wants this too.

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound.

This is still one of the black man's big troubles today. So many of those so-called "upper class" Negroes are so busy trying to impress on the white man that they are "different from those others" that they can't see they are only helping the white man to keep his low opinion of all Negroes.

For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, 'Do you hate me?