In the increasingly mechanized, automated, cybernated environment of the modern world a cold, bodiless world of wheels, smooth plastic surfaces, tubes, pushbuttons, transistors, computers, jet propulsion, rockets to the moon, atomic energy man's need for affirmation of his biology has become that much more intense.
Eldridge CleaverWhat America demands in her black champions is a brilliant, powerful body and a dull, bestial mind.
Eldridge CleaverEvery time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom. The white man forbade me to have the white woman on pain of death... I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman in my bed.
Eldridge CleaverHistory could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and title graven red in human blood.
Eldridge CleaverThe myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde.
Eldridge CleaverI feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare.
Eldridge CleaverIn prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Eldridge CleaverPig power in America was infuriating, but pig power in the communist framework was awesome and unaccountable.
Eldridge CleaverThere is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness.
Eldridge CleaverIf God himself wills such misery on people whom I love, then I say I will deal with him
Eldridge CleaverYou don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.
Eldridge CleaverThe white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.
Eldridge CleaverI have lived those lines and I know that if I had not been apprehended I would have slit some white throats.
Eldridge CleaverThe racist conscience of America is such that murder does not register as murder really, unless the victim is white... blacks knew that white blood is the coin of freedom in a land where for four hundred years black blood has been shed unremarked and with impunity.
Eldridge CleaverThe struggle of our people for freedom has progressed to the form where all of us must take a stand either for or against the freedom of our people You are either with Your People or against them. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.
Eldridge CleaverI know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings. They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other. I do not want to "hold" you, I want you to "stay" out of your own need for me.
Eldridge CleaverThe Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.
Eldridge CleaverBut it is not that easy, is it? I seek a lasting relationship, something permanent in a world of change, in which all is transitory, ephemeral, and full of pain.
Eldridge CleaverThe object is for everyone to do their own thing, but the thing is to make one's thing the Revolution.
Eldridge CleaverAmericans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.
Eldridge CleaverThe paper tiger hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.
Eldridge CleaverAnd why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.
Eldridge CleaverEvery highly successful person is a maniac on a mission. Too much agreement kills a chat
Eldridge CleaverIf a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
Eldridge CleaverWith all its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world.
Eldridge Cleaver