When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people then you are making a statement and the statement is clear
Assata ShakurRead
No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education must be sought actively, especially for those who seek to challenge oppressive systems.
Assata Shakur's quote emphasizes the necessity of taking initiative in one's own education, particularly in the context of empowerment and resistance against oppressive forces. It suggests that those in power are unlikely to provide the tools or knowledge needed for the oppressed to liberate themselves, underscoring the importance of self-education and activism in the fight for justice and equality.
Themes
EducationEmpowermentOppressionSelf-EducationResistanceActivism
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of grassroots education in social movements.
More from Assata Shakur
All quotes βPart of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It's really working to create something beautiful.
Assata ShakurRead
We had to learn that we're beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active
Assata ShakurRead
I was sentenced to life plus 30 years by an all-White jury. What I saw in prison was wall-to-wall Black flesh in chains. Women caged in cells. But we're the terrorists. It just doesn't make sense.
Assata ShakurRead
My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle.
Assata ShakurRead
Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford.
Assata ShakurRead
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I believe in the power of ideas, I believe in the power of books, but you have to give them time.
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Someday America will have its very own commercial-free TV and radio station devoted to only one thing: to teach people, in their homes, all the essentials of personal achievement.
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You go to school, you study about the Germans and the French, but not about your own race. I hope the time will come when you study black history too.
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For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.
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I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?
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Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.
Bertrand RussellRead