Quotes by Stokely Carmichael

About Stokely Carmichael:

Stokely Carmichael was a Trinidadian-American revolutionary active in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and later, the global Pan-African movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of eleven, he graduated from Howard University. He rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and finally as a leader of the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I usually say I did the best I could with what I had. I have no major regrets.

Stokely Carmichael

A man is born free.

Stokely Carmichael

Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.

Stokely Carmichael

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

Stokely Carmichael

Integration is a man's ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.

Stokely Carmichael

It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.

Stokely Carmichael

Leaders in Africa are so corrupt that we are certain if we put dogs in uniforms and put guns on their shoulders, we'd be hard put to distinguish them.

Stokely Carmichael

Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those ...

Stokely Carmichael

One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.

Stokely Carmichael

Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath. We ain't running no more.

Stokely Carmichael

Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they're built upon racism.

Stokely Carmichael

The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.

Stokely Carmichael

The masses don't shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.

Stokely Carmichael

The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.

Stokely Carmichael

There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.

Stokely Carmichael

Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. Tha...

Stokely Carmichael

No man can given anybody his freedom.

Stokely Carmichael

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.

Stokely Carmichael

We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.

Stokely Carmichael

There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.

Stokely Carmichael

Author Bio

  • NameStokely Carmichael
  • DescriptionAmerican activist
  • BornJune 29, 1941
  • DiedNovember 15, 1998
  • CountryTrinidad And Tobago; United States Of America