Quotessence
Home / Topics / Angela Davis Quotes

Angela Davis Quotes

Browse 11 quotes about Angela Davis.

Angela Davis Quotes

“Some of us, white and black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own - which it is - and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”

LetterAngela DavisIf They Come In The Morning
Author:James Baldwin
Create image

“An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why "criminals" have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others. Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category "lawbreakers" is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another.”

Criminal JusticeAngela Davis
Book:Are Prisons Obsolete?
Create image

“I want to see all oppressed people throughout the world free. And the only way we can do this is by moving toward a revolutionary society where the needs and wishes of all people can be respected.' With these words the radical philosophy professor Angela Davis paraphrases Isaiah's ancient messianic dream of the lion that will peacefully lie down with the lamb in a completely good world. But what the Biblical prophet perhaps could not know is contained with a clarity that leaves nothing to be desired in the opening sentence of an address of the French Senate to Napoleon I: "Sire, the desire for perfection is one of the worst maladies that can affect the human mind.”

IsaiahAngela DavisDesire For Perfection
Book:Münchhausen's Pigtail, or Psychotherapy & "Reality"
Create image

“People, especially young white people, in America and in Europe are aware of what's happening in the ghetto even if their fathers maintain an obstinate ignorance. All over Europe I've seen young people who've studied the methods of the Black Liberation movement, applying those same methods to the job of forcing a bit of humanity into their profit-crazed and economically teetering countries. Of course it's got its amusing sides too and very often one is forced to rush somewhere for a drink after he's seen a group of the blond German youths with hair frizzled and worn in Afros. The parents of these kids have all picked the portrait of the President of the United States as a symbol of what was good in America...But I've been in no part of Europe where there wasn't the picture of a good American--and it was always Angela Davis!”

EuropeAngela Davis
Book:Why I Left America and Other Essays
Create image

“¿Sabes que ese manzano fue plantado con la tierra robada a los Rodilla-Herida por el gobernador del estado? ¿Acaso tú conoces que su savia se nutre con los huesos y pelos prisioneros de San Quintín? Did you know that apple tree was planted on land stolen from Wounded Knee by the governor of the state? Perhaps you know how its sap is nourished with the prisoner bones and hair of San Quentin? (de Un Manzano de Oakland, para Angela Davis)”

PrisonWounded KneeAngela Davis
Book:Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing: Selected Poetry
Create image

“Y a ti, viajero, te dará sombra siempre, pero detén tu marcha pesarosa ante esa sombra suya. No olvidarás jamás que ha sido la triste, cruel, umbrosa, la efímera morada de múltiples cabezas negras colgando entre el follaje, incorruptibles. And you, traveller, it will shade you always, but slow your heavy step before its shadow. Never will you forget this tree has been of multitudinous black heads hanging among the foliage, the sad, cruel, shadowy, the ephemeral dwelling incorruptible. (de Un Manzano de Oakland, para Angela Davis)”

Angela Davis
Book:Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing: Selected Poetry
Create image