Assata Shakur: Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that...

A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man. If he's not about liberation, if he's not about struggle, if he ain't about building a strong Black family, if he ain't about building a strong Black nation, then he ain't about nothing.

Assata Shakur

strong struggle men

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.

Assata Shakur

moral people world

No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.

Assata Shakur

hero giving needs

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

Assata Shakur

tolerance people thinking

We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It's not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.

Assata Shakur

construction weapons needs

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

Assata Shakur

support fighting winning

Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is....never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.

Assata Shakur

fool enemy

Hip Hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young people's political and social consciousness. But just as with any weapon, if you don't know how to use it, if you don't know where to point it, or what you're using it for, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters or brothers.

Assata Shakur

powerful brother feet

Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.

Assata Shakur

crazy strong weak

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

Assata Shakur

oppression resistance

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows.

Assata Shakur

tolerance people thinking

Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

Assata Shakur

opposites dream reality

I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property.

Assata Shakur

heartless war lying

White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.

Assata Shakur

fighting gun thinking

The first part of planning is to believe that you can put that plan into practise.

Assata Shakur

planning believe firsts

Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.

Assata Shakur

black revolutionary moon

The usual way the people are taught to think in amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no relation to any other subject. For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern. It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.

Assata Shakur

usual people thinking

I hate war, and I hate having to struggle. I honestly do because I wish I had been born into a world where it was unnecessary. This context of struggle and being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression. Otherwise I would be a sculptor, or a gardener, carpenter - You know, I would be free to be so much more… I guess part of me or a part of who I am, a part of what I do is being a warrior - a reluctant warrior, a reluctant struggler. But I do it, because I’m committed to life.

Assata Shakur

hate struggle war

I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port

Assata Shakur

tired home believe

At this time I'd like to say a few words especially to my sisters: SISTERS. BLACK PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE FREE UNLESS BLACK WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR STRUGGLE, ON EVERY LEVEL OF OUR STRUGGLE.

Assata Shakur

black struggle people

Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars. But you, me, and tomorrow hold hands and make vows that struggle will multiply. The hacksaw has two blades. The shotgun has two barrels. We are pregnant with freedom. We are a conspiracy.