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Black Lives Matter Quotes

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Black Lives Matter Quotes

“Anger expressed in the interior life is permitted to exist in its rawest and most honest form. It is not kept private out of shame or because it is inferior in status to public anger. Rather, its privacy grants us the freedom to understand our rage without pressure or compulsion to dilute it. It gives us the space to be laid bare and have our anger, like any emotion, refined in the presence of the divine.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Exterior anger is often in defense of some sphere, person or piece of creation […] Anger is never holier than when it acts in defense of the dignity of a person or piece of creation. But it requires we be more measured and protective of our words—not so that we censor ourselves on behalf of the fragile and defensive, but so that we will be heard by those we wish to be heard by. You can be a person of profound anger without allowing it to eclipse your or anyone else’s personhood.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“As we think about the virtue of exterior anger, we should understand it as no more or less holy than interior anger. It is also not a trajectory. Our raw and private anger is not necessarily reborn into public anger. Interior expression of anger is a worthy practice in its own right.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Theologian Miroslav Volf once said, “I think the truthfulness of remembering is part and parcel of the justice of remembering… Why do we need to remember truthfully? Because every untruthful memory is an unjust memory, especially when it concerns relationships, fraught relationships of violence between people.” In this way, communal storytelling can be an act of justice.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“I had turned on myself. Once I heard it out loud with such venom, I became suddenly very sorry. And a realisation came awake in me: My body was not the bondage […] We are a people whose flesh grows back. It does not die quietly. We must remember this, even in the most painful conditions of our healing.”

FaithChristianityActivismLiberationBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“The question of calling is not primarily a question of what we might become, but a question of what is already true—not least of which is what is true about the self. Ask me what I want to be, but not before you ask me who I want to be. Ask me who I want to be, but not before you ask me the more searing question of who I am.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“We were never meant to dismember our selfhoods. My face is my soul is my blood is my glory. When we neglect the physical, it inevitably suffocates the image of a God who ate, slept, cried, bled, grew, and healed.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Fears tend to hide behind one another […] I am not afraid of snakes; I'm afraid of pain, of immobilization or death. Telling the deepest truth of the fear requires thorough acquaintance with our own stories and interior lives, and it can so easily bleed into this next form of fear, a fear that endures past particular situations and can very nearly transcend time: anxiety. Fear becomes anxiety when it makes its home in you. Its chief attachment is not memory or villain or situation or future; its chief attachment and subject is you […] As an antagonist, fear can disrupt the most sacred patterns of rest and restoration. Fear reminds us that we are not in control, that there is far more in life that is inevitable than preventable.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“The psalmist says, ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.’ I find it beautiful that in the face of terror; God doesn't bid us toward courage as we might perceive it. Instead, he draws us toward fear’s essential sister, rest—a sister who is not meant to replace fear but to exist together in tension and harmony with it […] And, of course, there is a fear that leans more toward awe than terror. A kind of delight. Your gut plummets within you as you drop from a bungee cord. The drum of a heart turning corners in a corn maze. I believe fear has the holy potential to draw out awe in us. To lead us into deeper patterns of protection and trust. To mould us into people engaged in the unknown, capable of making mystery of it instead of terror.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“Uncertainty is fear's playground. I don't know how to wade in it and not drown […] The ancient answer to fear is the recognition that to be human is to be vulnerable—to pain, to suffering, to death itself.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“We are seldom impressed by simplicity, unless it is the kind inflated with theatrics, which inevitably draws attention to itself—capsule wardrobes, minimalism, van life—and still is, in a manner, doing […] We become obsessed with the language of how God might ‘use’ us, never pausing to ask ourselves, What if God doesn't always want to use you? What if sometimes God just wants to be with you? We've become estranged from this idea. We would never articulate it as such, but undergirding much of our concept of calling is the belief that our primary relationship to God is anchored in transaction. God resists this. People think the sabbath is antiquated; I think it will save us from ourselves. When God tells the Israelites to practice rest, he uses the memory of their bondage to awaken them to what could be. ‘Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore, the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day’ (Deuteronomy 5:15). When we rest, we do so in memory of rest denied. We receive what has been withheld from ourselves and our ancestors. And our present respite draws us into a remembrance of those who were not permitted it.”

ActivismBelovedBlack Lives MatterBlack AuthorsToni MorrisonCole Arthur RileyBlack LiturgiesThis Here Flesh
Book:This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
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“That free time is one of the biggest barriers to activism was, in a way, proven in the summer of 2020, as the protests over George Floyd and the slew of other Black lives lost became the most attended protests in American history. Up to twenty-six million Americans participated, a number that would be unthinkable were it not for the converging COVID-19 epidemic and the unprecedented amount of free time that accompanied it.”

ActivismProtestAmerican HistoryBlack Lives MatterRiotBlmEpidemicLgbt Advocates
Book:It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic
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“One of the things about people who have little left to lose, of course, is that they have everything to gain. On August 9, 2014, the disinherited of St. Louis rose again to take control of their history. When the time came, they were ready--subjects of a history of serial dispossession and imperial violence so profound that it has been built into the very fabric and common sense of the city, yes, but also legatees of a history of Black radicalism and direct action as measurelessly implacable as the flow of the rivers. And still they rise.”

HistoryActivismBlack Lives MatterSt Louis
Book:The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
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“One thing more makes these men and women from the age of wigs, swords, and stagecoaches seem surprisingly contemporary. This small group of people not only helped to end one of the worst of human injustices in the most powerful empire of its time; they also forged virtually every important tool used by citizens’ movements in democratic countries today. Think of what you’re likely to find in your mailbox—or electronic mailbox—over a month or two. An invitation to join the local chapter of a national environmental group. If you say yes, a logo to put on your car bumper. A flier asking you to boycott California grapes or Guatemalan coffee. A poster to put in your window promoting this campaign. A notice that a prominent social activist will be reading from her new book at your local bookstore. A plea that you write your representative in Congress or Parliament, to vote for that Guatemalan coffee boycott bill. A “report card” on how your legislators have voted on these and similar issues. A newsletter from the group organizing support for the grape pickers or the coffee workers. Each of these tools, from the poster to the political book tour, from the consumer boycott to investigative reporting designed to stir people to action, is part of what we take for granted in a democracy. Two and a half centuries ago, few people assumed this. When we wield any of these tools today, we are using techniques devised or perfected by the campaign that held its first meeting at 2 George Yard in 1787. From their successful crusade we still have much to learn. If, early that year, you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured you that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire’s economy would collapse. The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but thought that the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic slave trade was “chimerical.” Within a few short years, however, the issue of slavery had moved to center stage in British political life. There was an abolition committee in every major city or town in touch with a central committee in London. More than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat slave-grown sugar. Parliament was flooded with far more signatures on abolition petitions than it had ever received on any other subject. And in 1792, the House of Commons passed the first law banning the slave trade. For reasons we will see, a ban did not take effect for some years to come, and British slaves were not finally freed until long after that. But there was no mistaking something crucial: in an astonishingly short period of time, public opinion in Europe’s most powerful nation had undergone a sea change. From this unexpected transformation there would be no going back.”

HistorySlaveryActivismBlack Lives Matter
Book:Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
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“I have grown tired of the notion of an ally. I prefer the language of an “accomplice.” An ally loves you from a distance. An accomplice loves you up close. We need allies to make the transition to accomplices. An ally is someone who has unpacked her personal privilege but hasn’t yet made the link to institutional issues and is not willing to risk anything besides her mental comfort. An accomplice rolls up her sleeves and engages in the work that is beyond her. She’ll march in the streets, yes. But an accomplice also faces her own participation in whiteness, acknowledges it, and then looks beyond that personal acknowledgment to identify how her awareness can be applied to changing the systems and mindsets that prop up the system.”

InspirationalActivismBlack Lives MatterRace Relations
Book:On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope
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“Darkness seems to have prevailed and has taken the forefront. This country as in the 'cooperation' of The United States of America has never been about the true higher-good of the people. Know and remember this. Cling to your faith. Roll your spiritual sleeves up and get to work. Use your energy wisely. Transmute all anger, panic and fear into light and empowerment. Don't use what fuels them; all lower-energy. Mourn as you need to. Console who you need to—and then go get into the spiritual and energetic arena. There's plenty work for us to do; within and without. Let's each focus on becoming 'The President of Our Own Life. Cultivate your mind. Pursue your purpose. Shine your light. Elevate past—and reject—any culture of low vibrational energy and ratchetness. Don't take fear, defeat or anger—on or in. The system is doing what they've been created to do. Are you? Am I? Are we—collectively? Let's get to work. No more drifting through life without your higher-self in complete control of your mind. Awaken—fully. Activate—now. Put your frustrations or concerns into your work. Don't lose sight. There is still—a higher plan. Let's ride this 4 year energetic-wave like the spiritual gangsters that we are. This will all be the past soon. Let's get to work and stay dedicated, consistent and diligent. Again, this will all be the past soon. We have preparing and work to do. Toxic energy is so not a game. Toxic energy and low vibrations are being collectively acted out on the world stage. Covertly operating through the unconscious weak spots and blind spots in the human psyche; making people oblivious to their own madness, causing and influencing them to act against–their–own–best–interests and higher-good, as if under a spell and unconsciously possessed. This means that they are actually nourishing the lower vibrational energy with their lifestyle, choices, energy and habits, which is unconsciously giving the lower-energy the very power and fuel it needs—for repeating and recreating endless drama, suffering and destruction, in more and more amplified forms on a national and world stage. So what do we do? We take away its autonomy and power over us while at the same time empowering ourselves. By recognizing how this energetic/spiritual virus or parasite of the mind—operates through our unawareness is the beginning of the cure. Knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is—freedom. Our shared future will be decided primarily by the changes that take place in the psyche of humanity, starting with each of us— vibrationally. In closing and most importantly, the greatest protection against becoming affected or possessed by this lower-energy is to be in touch with our higher vibrational-self. We have to call our energy and power back. Being in touch with our higher-self and true nature acts as a sacred amulet, shielding and protecting us from the attempted effects. We defeat evil not by fighting against it (in which case, by playing its game, we’ve already lost) but by getting in touch with the part of us that is invulnerable to its effects— our higher vibrational-self. Will this defeat and destroy us? Or will it awaken us more and more? Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us and our stepping out of the unconscious influence of low vibrational/negative/toxic/evil/distraction energy (or whatever name you relate to it as) that is and has been seeking power over each of our lives energetically and/or spiritually, and step into our wholeness, our personal power, our higher self and vibrate higher and higher daily. Stay woke my friends—let's get to work.”

InspirationMotivationalAmericaSpiritSpiritualityEnergyCourageTeacherJourneyStudentsUnityActivismWholenessOne LoveSocial IssuesGet InvolvedBlack Lives MatterGuruEnergeticSpeak UpVibesHeal The WorldLalah DeliaDo The WorkStay WokeVibrate HigherVibrationalHigher GoodNative Lives MatterThe Work
Author:Lalah Delia
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“There are advances in technology and enabling voices, but there are issues with the stories themselves. I think people of color are still not seen as human beings. They're still associated with types, with comedy, but we're in a crisis right now, with things like Black Lives Matter. We need films that address these issues.”

PeopleThinkingNeedsHumansStillsMatterStoriesFilmBlackVoiceHuman BeingsTechnologyIssuesComedyColorTypeRight NowCrisisAddressesBlack Lives MatterEnablingBlack Lives
Author:Charles Burnett
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“When I'm talking to people, I find myself quoting the three organizing rules of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter was initiated by three young women, and too few people know that. But, anyway, the first one is lead with love. The second is low ego, high impact. The third is move with the speed of trust. I must say those make me feel very hopeful for the future.”

PeopleKnowsFeelsFirstsMatterMovingYoungThreeBlackTalkingEgoLowsThirdsImpactSpeedHopefulYoung WomenBlack Lives MatterQuotingBlack Lives
Author:Gloria Steinem
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“I think the way the country has changed in part because of the presidency of Barack Obama, I think in part because of what we`ve - the violence that we have seen on our cell phones and our TV sets over the last couple of years. I think Black Lives Matter has helped to force these issues. Women like Sabrina Fulton. We`re having a different conversation in this country right now about race and what it means to really understand your experience is and my experience is.”

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Author:Killer Mike
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“You know, I had a new kind of thought on Black Lives Matter and the All Lives Matter thing. And the best way to explain it is if we're all sitting around at a table having dinner, and everybody gets pie except for you and you say, my pie matters, I don't have pie, and everybody at the table looks at you and says, I know, all pie matters, it shows that the people at the table aren't really listening.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWayLooksKindMatterShowsBlackListeningSittingTablesDinnerBest WayPieBlack Lives MatterSitting AroundBlack Lives
Author:Glenn Beck
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“By the end of the documentary [ '13th'], you really understand what prison is, what the prison industrial complex is, where this whole Black Lives Matter movement comes from, the history of resistance, the history of how politicians have used criminality over the decades for a particular political gain. It's to give people an understanding of it so they can make their own decisions about how they want to be in the world.”

PeopleWorldWantGivingEndsMatterWholePoliticalUsedUnderstandingBlackDecisionMovementParticularPoliticianGainsPrisonComplexesDecadesResistanceDocumentariesBlack Lives MatterCriminalityBlack Lives
Author:Ava DuVernay
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“Historically it has been a touchy subject, especially in the south where I am from, people don't really talk about it. If they do talk about it, it is often talked about negatively. Nowadays in light of the Black Lives Matter movement I think people should pay attention to these lives also. I think the Black community will really embrace the film [Moonlight]. It is about us. It is real.”

PeopleIfsThinkingShouldHas BeensRealMatterLightFilmBlackCommunityPayAttentionSubjectsMovementEmbraceSouthPay AttentionMoonlightBlack Lives MatterBlack CommunityTouchyBlack Lives
Author:Andre Holland
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