Angela Davis Quotes: Civil Right Activist Famous Sayings
Angela Davis’s quotes are powerful reflections of the American-born author’s life experiences, struggles, and triumphs. You can learn a thing or two from Angela Davis’s Quotes, but you will only find out as you read.
The American author, academic, and political activist, Angela Yvonne Davis, focuses her writing on significant themes such as politics, gender equality, and women’s rights.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Angela was a member of the Black Panther Party and is also well-known for her participation in the Communist Party of the USA.
Let’s explore more of these Angela Davis quotes.
Angela Davis Quotes
Angela Davis participated in civil rights protests when she was a little child and attended segregated schools into her senior year of high school.
Get motivated by some of her popular quotes below.
1. “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” -Angela Davis
2. I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities.
3. But at the same time you can’t assume that making a difference 20 years ago is going to allow you to sort of live on the laurels of those victories for the rest of your life.
4. “I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities.” – Angela Davis
5. “I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, and economic equality will elude us.”
6. “We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.” – Angela Davis.
7. “Feminism involves so much more than gender equality. And it involves so much more than gender.” “Angela Davis quotes”
8. “I think the lack of critical engagement with the food that we eat demonstrates the extent to which the commodity form has become the primary way in which we perceive the world,” -Angela Davis
9. “I’m a feminist so I believe in inhabiting contradictions. I believe in making contradictions productive, not in having to choose one side or the other side. As opposed to choosing either or, choosing both.”
10. Well of course there’s been a great deal of progress over the last 40 years. We don’t have laws that segregate black people within the society any longer.
11. “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” – Angela Davis.
12. “We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.” -Angela Davis
13. “I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change…I’m changing the things I cannot accept.” -Angela Davis
14. Feminism insists on methods of thought and action that urge us to think about things that appear to be separate and to disaggregate things that appear to naturally belong together.
15. “As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.” – Angela Davis
16. “The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?” -Angela Davis.
17. Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s going to be possible. “Angela Davis quotes”
18. “Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.” -Angela Davis
19. We should seek out all the doors which remain ajar, however slight the opening might be.
20. “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” – Angela Davis
21. “Black feminism emerged as a theoretical and practical effort demonstrating that race, gender, and class are inseparable in the social worlds we inhabit.” – Angela Davis.
22. It is important not only to have the awareness and to feel impelled to become involved, but there must be a forum out there to which one can relate, an organization- a movement.
23. “I believe in making contradictions productive, not in having to choose one side or the other side. As opposed to choosing either or, choosing both.” – Angela Davis.
24. It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.
25. The fact that we look no further than the commodity itself, the fact that we refuse to understand the relationships that underlie the commodities that we use daily. And so food is like that.” -Angela Davis
26. “We have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as ‘normal.” “Angela Davis quotes”
27. “Many of us then thought that what we needed to do was to expand the category ‘women’ so that it could embrace Black women, Latina women, Native American women, and so forth.” – Angela Davis
28. “No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step.”-Angela Davis
29. “When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.” -Angela Davis
30. I’m attempting to do it right now.
31. “Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.”
32. “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.” -Angela Davis
33. “What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.”
34. I sank deep into the moment, husbanding this delight, hoarding it. For I knew it would be short-lived. Work. Struggle. Confrontation lay before us like a rock-strewn road. We would walk it. But first the grass, the sun…and the people.
35. You can never stop and as older people, we have to learn how to take leadership from the youth and I guess I would say that this is what5. “Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.”
36. “I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, and economic equality will elude us.” – Angela Davis
37. “Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems.” “Angela Davis quotes”
38. “The food we eat masks so much cruelty. The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, and how capitalism has colonized our minds.
39. “As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.” -Angela Davis
40. “I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.” – Angela Davis
41. “We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.” -Angela Davis
42. “It is important not only to have the awareness and to feel impelled to become involved, there must be a forum out there to which one can relate, an organization- a movement.” -Angela Davis
43. “Racism cannot be separated from capitalism.” -Angela Davis
44. “I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.”
45. “Poor people, people of color – especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.” “Angela Davis quotes”
46. “Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings” -Angela Davis
47. “Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it’s perhaps far more terrible than it’s ever been.” -Angela Davis
48. “I think we have to focus on the issues much more than we may have in the past. I think we have to seek to create coalitional strategies that go beyond racial lines. We need to bring black communities, Chicano communities, Puerto Rican communities, Asian American communities together.” – Angela Davis
49. I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect.
50. “Progressive art can assist people to learn what’s at work in the society in which they live.” – Angela Davis
51. “There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.” -Angela Davis
52. “No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step.” – Angela Davis
53. “Walls turned sideways are bridges.” – Angela Davis.
54. “To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.” “Angela Davis quotes”
55. I try never to take myself for granted as somebody who should be out there speaking. Rather, I’m doing it only because I feel there’s something important that needs to be conveyed.
56. “I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change…I’m changing the things I cannot accept.”
57. “Justice is indivisible. You can’t decide who gets civil rights and who doesn’t.” -Angela Davis
58. Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo – obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.
59. “It is important not only to have the awareness and to feel impelled to become involved, there must be a forum out there to which one can relate, an organization- a movement.” – Angela Davis
60. “Feminism insists on methods of thought and action that urge us to think about things together that appear to be separate, and to disaggregate things that appear to naturally belong together.” – Angela Davis.
61. In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.
62. “Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.” -Angela Davis
63. Progressive art can assist people in learning what’s at work in the society in which they live.
64. To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women. “Angela Davis quotes”
65. “Walls turned sideways are bridges.” -Angela Davis
66. “I often like to talk about feminism not as something that adheres to bodies, not as something grounded in gendered bodies, but as an approach- as a way of conceptualizing, as a methodology, as a guide to strategies for struggle.” – Angela Davis.
