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Stokely Carmichael

Stokely Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a prominent American figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the global Pan-African movement. He founded the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later serving as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and finally as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).

Quotes

 * Ultimately, the economic foundations of this country must be shaken if black people are to control their lives. The colonies of the United States—and this includes the black ghettoes within its borders, north and south—must be liberated. For a century, this nation has been like an octopus of exploitation, its tentacles stretching from Mississippi and Harlem to South America, the Middle East, southern Africa, and Vietnam; the form of exploitation varies from area to area but the essential result has been the same—a powerful few have been maintained and enriched at the expense of the poor and voiceless colored masses. This pattern must be broken.
 * "What We Want," New York Review of Books (September 22, 1966)

 * They Head Start, Upward Lift, Bootstrap, and Upward Bound us into white society, 'cause they don’t want to face the real problem which is a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: 'cause he does not have money -- period. If you want to get rid of poverty, you give people money -- period.
 * "Black Power" Speech at University of California, Berkeley (October 29, 1966)

 * The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead!
 * addressing a crowd alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others during the March Against Fear (1966), Link

 * Dr. King’s policy was, if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption. In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.
 * The Black Power Mixtape (1967-1975)

 * The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.
 * in (1967), as quoted in Andrew Sinclair's Viva Che!: The Strange Death and Life of Che Guevara

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

 * co-authored with Charles V. Hamilton

Preface

 * Programs do not come out of the minds of any one person or two people such as ourselves, but out of day-to-day work, out of interaction between organizers and the communities in which they work.

 * The whole question of race is one that America would much rather not face honestly and squarely. To some, it is embarrassing; to others, it is inconvenient; to still others, it is confusing. But for black Americans, to know it and tell it like it is and then to act on that knowledge should be neither embarrassing nor inconvenient nor confusing. Those responses are luxuries for people with time to spare, who feel no particular sense of urgency about the need to solve certain serious social problems. Black people in America have no time to play nice, polite parlor games—especially when the lives of their children are at stake. Some white Americans can afford to speak softly, tread lightly, employ the soft-sell and put-off (or is it put-down?). They own the society. For black people to adopt their methods of relieving our oppression is ludicrous. We blacks must respond in our own way, on our own terms, in a manner which fits our temperaments. The definitions of ourselves, the roles we pursue, the goals we seek are our responsibility. It is crystal clear that the society is capable of and willing to reward those individuals who do not forcefully condemn it—to reward them with prestige, status and material benefits. But these crumbs of co-optation should be rejected. The over-riding, all-important fact is that as a people, we have absolutely nothing to lose by refusing to play such games.

 * Anything less than clarity, honesty and forcefulness perpetuates the centuries of sliding over, dressing up, and soothing down the true feelings, hopes and demands of an oppressed black people. Mild demands and hypocritical smiles mislead white America into thinking that all is fine and peaceful. They mislead white America into thinking that the path and pace chosen to deal with racial problems are acceptable to masses of black Americans. It is far better to speak forcefully and truthfully. Only when one’s true self—white or black—is exposed, can this society proceed to deal with the problems from a position of clarity and not from one of misunderstanding.

 * Black Power means that black people see themselves as part of a new force, sometimes called the “Third World”; that we see our struggle as closely related to liberation struggles around the world. We must hook up with these struggles.

Chapter One

 * What is racism? The word has represented daily reality to millions of black people for centuries, yet it is rarely defined—perhaps just because that reality has been such a commonplace. By “racism” we mean the predication of decisions and policies on considerations of race for the purpose of subordinating a racial group and maintaining control over that group. That has been the practice of this country toward the black man; we shall see why and how. Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type.
 * pp. 3-4

 * When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city——five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which many people will condemn—at least in words. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.
 * p. 4

 * Institutional racism relies on the active and pervasive operation of anti-black attitudes and practices. A sense of superior group position prevails: whites are “better” than blacks; therefore blacks should be subordinated to whites. This is a racist attitude and it permeates the society, on both the individual and institutional level, covertly and overtly. “Respectable” individuals can absolve themselves from individual blame: they would never plant a bomb in a church; they would never stone a black family. But they continue to support political officials and institutions that would and do perpetuate institutionally racist policies. Thus acts of overt, individual racism may not typify the society, but institutional racism does—with the support of covert, individual attitudes of racism.
 * p. 5

 * Black people in this country form a colony, and it is not in the interest of the colonial power to liberate them. Black people are legal citizens of the United States with, for the most part, the same legal rights as other citizens. Yet they stand as colonial subjects in relation to the white society. Thus institutional racism has another name: colonialism. [...] Black people in the United States have a colonial relationship to the larger society, a relationship characterized by institutional racism. That colonial status operates in three areas—political, economic, social.
 * pp. 5-6

 * Exploiters come into the ghetto from outside, bleed it dry, and leave it economically dependent on the larger society. As with the missionaries, these exploiters frequently come as the “friend of the Negro,” pretending to offer worthwhile goods and services, when their basic motivation is personal profit and their basic impact is the maintenance of racism. Many of the social welfare agencies—public and private—frequently pretend to offer “uplift” services; in reality, they end up creating a system which dehumanizes the individual and perpetuates his dependency. Conscious or unconscious, the attitude of many of these agencies is no different from that of many missionaries going into Africa.
 * p. 17

 * This is why the society does nothing meaningful about institutional racism: because the black community has been the creation of, and dominated by, a combination of oppressive forces and special interests in the white community. The groups which have access to the necessary resources and the ability to effect change benefit politically and economically from the continued subordinate status of the black community. This is not to say that every single white American consciously oppresses black people. He does not need to. Institutional racism has been maintained deliberately by the power structure and through indifference, inertia and lack courage on the part of white masses as well as petty officials. Whenever black demands for change become loud and strong, indifference is replaced by active opposition based on fear and self-interest. The line between purposeful suppression and indifference blurs. One way or another, most whites participate in economic colonialism.
 * p. 22

 * Indeed, the colonial white power structure has been a most formidable foe. It has perpetuated a vicious circle—the poverty cycle—in which the black communities are denied good jobs, and therefore stuck with a low income and therefore unable to obtain a good education with which to obtain good jobs. [...] They cannot qualify for credit at most reputable places; they then resort to unethical merchants who take advantage of them by charging higher prices for inferior goods. They end up having less funds to buy in bulk, thus unable to reduce overall costs. They remain trapped. In the face of such realities, it becomes ludicrous to condemn black people for “not showing more initiative.” Black people are not in a depressed condition because of some defect in their character. The colonial power structure clamped a boot of oppression on the neck of the black people and then, ironically, said “they are not ready for freedom.” Left solely to the good will of the oppressor, the oppressed would never be ready. And no one accepts blame. And there is no “white power structure” doing it to them. And they are in that condition “because they are lazy and don’t want to work.” And this is not colonialism. And this is the land of opportunity, and the home of the free. And people should not become alienated. But people do become alienated.
 * p. 22

 * The operation of political and economic colonialism in this country has had social repercussions which date back to slavery but did not by any means end with the Emancipation Proclamation. Perhaps the most vicious result of colonialism—in Africa and this country—was that it purposefully, maliciously and with reckless abandon relegated the black man to a subordinated, inferior status in the society. The individual was considered and treated as a lowly animal, not to be housed properly, or given adequate medical services, and by no means a decent education.
 * p. 23

 * Even when the black man has participated in wars to defend this country, even when the black man has repeatedly demonstrated loyalty to this country, the embedded colonial mentality has continued to deny him equal status in the social order. Participation of black men in the white man’s wars is a characteristic of colonialism. The colonial ruler readily calls upon and expects the subjects to fight and die in defense of the colonial empire, without the ruler feeling any particular compulsion to grant the subjects equal status. In fact, the war is frequently one to defend the socio-political status quo established between the ruler and subject. Whatever else may be changed by wars, the fundamental relation between colonial master and subordinates remains substantially unaltered.
 * p. 25

 * Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that this country entered World War I “to make the world safe for democracy.” This was the very same President who issued executive orders segregating most of the eating and rest-room facilities for federal employees. [...] Obviously, black people were not included in Woodrow Wilson’s defense perimeter. Whatever the life of blacks might have been under German rule, this country clearly did not fight Germany for the improvement of the status of black people—under the saved democracy—in this land.
 * p. 25-26

 * The social effects of colonialism are to degrade and to dehumanize the subjected black man.
 * p. 31

 * Racist assumptions of white superiority have been so deeply engrained into the fiber of the society that they infuse the entire functioning of the national subconscious. They are taken for granted and frequently not even recognized.
 * p. 31

 * The time is long overdue for the black community to redefine itself, set forth new values and goals, and organize around them.
 * p. 32

Chapter Two

 * Black people in the United States must raise hard questions, questions which challenge the very nature of the society itself: its long-standing values, beliefs and institutions. To do this, we must first redefine ourselves. Our basic need is to reclaim our history and our identity from what must be called cultural terrorism, from the depredation of self-justifying . We shall have to struggle for the right to create our own terms through which to define ourselves and our relationship to the society, and to have these terms recognized. This is the first necessity of a free people, and the first right that any oppressor must suspend.
 * p. 34

 * To black Africans, the word “Uhuru” means “freedom,” but they had to fight the white colonizers for the right to use the term.
 * p. 36

 * Today, the American educational system continues to reinforce the entrenched values of the society through the use of words. Few people in this country question that this is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” They have had these words drummed into them from childhood. Few people question that this is the “Great Society” or that this country is fighting “Communist aggression” around the world. We mouth these things over and over, and they become truisms not to be questioned. In a similar way, black people have been saddled with epithets.
 * p. 37

 * Black people must redefine themselves, and only they can do that. Throughout this country, vast segments of the black communities are beginning to recognize the need to assert their own definitions, to reclaim their history, their culture; to create their own sense of community and togetherness. There is a growing resentment of the word “Negro,” for example, because this term is the invention of our oppressor; it is his image of us that he describes. Many blacks are now calling themselves African-Americans, Afro-Americans or black people because that is our image of ourselves. When we begin to define our own image, the stereotypes—that is, lies—that our oppressor has developed will begin in the white community and end there. The black community will have a positive image of itself that it has created. This means we will no longer call ourselves lazy, apathetic, dumb, good-timers, shiftless, etc. Those are words used by white America to define us. If we accept these adjectives, as some of us have in the past, then we see ourselves only in a negative way, precisely the way white America wants us to see ourselves. Our incentive is broken and our will to fight is surrendered. From now on we shall view ourselves as African-Americans and as black people who are in fact energetic, determined, intelligent, beautiful and peace-loving.
 * pp. 37-38

 * There is a terminology and ethos peculiar to the black community of which black people are beginning to be no longer ashamed. Black communities are the only large segments of this society where people refer to each other as brother—soul-brother, soul-sister. Some people may look upon this as ersatz, as make-believe, but it is not that. It is real. It is a growing sense of community. It is a growing realization that black Americans have a common bond not only among themselves, but with their African brothers.
 * p. 38

 * African-American history means a long history beginning on the continent of Africa, a history not taught in the standard textbooks of this country. It is absolutely essential that black people know this history, that they know their roots, that they develop an awareness of their cultural heritage. Too long have they been kept in submission by being told that they had no culture, no manifest heritage, before they landed on the slave auction blocks in this country. If black people are to know themselves as a vibrant, valiant people, they must know their roots. And they will soon learn that the Hollywood image of man-eating cannibals waiting for, and waiting on, the Great White Hunter is a lie. With redefinition will come a clearer notion of the role black Americans can play in this world. This role will emerge clearly out of the unique, common experiences of Afro-Asians.
 * p. 38

 * The values of this society support a racist system; we find it incongruous to ask black people to adopt and support most of those values. We also reject the assumption that the basic institutions of this society must be preserved. The goal of black people must not be to assimilate into middle-class America, for that class—as a whole—is without a viable conscience as regards humanity. The values of the middle class permit the perpetuation of the ravages of the black community. The values of that class are based on material aggrandizement, not the expansion of humanity. The values of that class ultimately support cloistered little closed societies tucked away neatly in tree-lined suburbia. The values of that class do not lead to the creation of an open society. That class mouths its preference for a free, competitive society, while at the same time forcefully and even viciously denying to black people as a group the opportunity to compete.
 * p. 40

 * This same middle class manifests a sense of superior group position in regard to race. This class wants “good government” for themselves; it wants good schools for its children. At the same time, many of its members sneak into the black community by day, exploit it, and take the money home to their middle-class communities at night to support their operas and art galleries and comfortable homes. When not actually robbing, they will fight off the handful of more affluent black people who seek to move in; when they approve or even seek token integration, it applies only to black people like themselves—as “white” as possible. This class is the backbone of institutional racism in this country. Thus we reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America because the values of that class are in themselves anti-humanist and because that class as a social force perpetuates racism.
 * p. 41

 * Reorientation means an emphasis on the dignity of man, not on the sanctity of property. It means the creation of a society where human misery and poverty are repugnant to that society, not an indication of laziness or lack of The creation of new values means the establishment of a society based, as Killens expresses it in Black Man’s Burden, on “free people,” not “free enterprise”. To do this means to modernize—indeed, to civilize—this country.
 * p. 41

 * The two major political parties in this country have become non-viable entities for the legitimate representation of the real needs of masses—especially blacks—in this country.
 * p. 42

 * Black people have seen the city planning commissions, the urban renewal commissions, the boards of education and the police departments fail to speak to their needs in a meaningful way. We must devise new structures, new institutions to replace those forms or to make them responsive. There is nothing sacred or inevitable about old institutions; the focus must be on people, not forms. Existing structures and established ways of doing things have a way of perpetuating themselves and for this reason, the modernizing process will be difficult. Therefore, timidity in calling into question the boards of education or the police departments will not do. They must be challenged forcefully and clearly. If this means the creation of parallel community institutions, then that must be the solution. If this means that black parents must gain control over the operation of the schools in the black community, then that must be the solution. The search for new forms means the search for institutions that will, for once, make decisions in the interest of black people. It means, for example, a building inspection department that neither winks at violations of building codes by absentee slumlords nor imposes meaningless fines which permit them to continue their exploitation of the black community.
 * pp. 42-43

 * The adoption of the concept of Black Power is one of the most legitimate and healthy developments in American politics and race relations in our time. [...] 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 begin to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations and to support those organizations. It is a call to reject the racist institutions and values of this society. The concept of Black Power rests on a fundamental premise: Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks. By this we mean that group solidarity is necessary before a group can operate effectively from a bargaining position of strength in a pluralistic society.
 * p. 44

 * The point is obvious: black people must lead and run their own organizations. Only black people can convey the revolutionary idea—and it is a revolutionary idea—that black people are able to do things themselves. Only they can help create in the community an aroused and continuing black consciousness that will provide the basis for political strength. In the past, white allies have often furthered white supremacy without the whites involved realizing it, or even wanting to do so. Black people must come together and do things for themselves. They must achieve self-identity and self-determination in order to have their daily needs met.
 * p. 46

 * It does not mean merely putting black faces into office. Black visibility is not Black Power. Most of the black politicians around the country today are not examples of Black Power. The power must be that of a community, and emanate from there. The black politicians must start from there. The black politicians must stop being representatives of “downtown” machines, whatever the cost might be in terms of lost patronage and holiday handouts.
 * p. 46

 * Black Power recognizes—it must recognize—the ethnic basis of American politics as well as the power-oriented nature of American politics. Black Power therefore calls for black people to consolidate behind their own, so that they can bargain from a position of strength. But while we endorse the procedure of group solidarity and identity for the purpose of attaining certain goals in the body politic, this does not mean that black people should strive for the same kind of rewards (i.e., end results) obtained by the white society. The ultimate values and goals are not domination or exploitation of other groups, but rather an effective share in the total power of the society.
 * p. 47

 * Nevertheless, some observers have labeled those who advocate Black Power as racists; they have said that the call for self-identification and self-determination is “racism in reverse” or “black supremacy.” This is a deliberate and absurd lie. There is no analogy—by any stretch of definition or imagination—between the advocates of Black Power and white racists. Racism is not merely exclusion on the basis of race but exclusion for the purpose of subjugating or maintaining subjugation. The goal of the racists is to keep black people on the bottom, arbitrarily and dictatorially, as they have done in this country for over three hundred years. The goal of black self-determination and black self-identity—Black Power—is full participation in the decision-making processes affecting the lives of black people, and recognition of the virtues in themselves as black people. The black people of this country have not lynched whites, bombed their churches, murdered their children and manipulated laws and institutions to maintain oppression. White racists have. Congressional laws, one after the other, have not been necessary to stop black people from oppressing others and denying others the full enjoyment of their rights. White racists have made such laws necessary. The goal of Black Power is positive and functional to a free and viable society. No white racist can make this claim.
 * pp. 47-48

 * There can be no social order without social justice.
 * p. 53

 * Black people have not suffered as individuals but as members of a group; therefore, their liberation lies in group action. This is why SNCC—and the concept of Black Power—affirms that helping individual black people to solve their problems on an individual basis does little to alleviate the mass of black people.
 * p. 54

 * While color blindness may be a sound goal ultimately, we must realize that race is an overwhelming fact of life in this historical period. There is no black man in this country who can live “simply as a man.” His blackness is an ever-present fact of this racist society, whether he recognizes it or not. It is unlikely that this or the next generation will witness the time when race will no longer be relevant in the conduct of public affairs and in public policy decision-making. To realize this and to attempt to deal with it does not make one a racist or overly preoccupied with race; it puts one in the forefront of a significant struggle. If there is no intense struggle today, there will be no meaningful results tomorrow.
 * p. 54

Chapter Three

 * Political relations are based on self-interest: benefits to be gained and losses to be avoided. For the most part, man’s politics is determined by his evaluation of material good and evil. Politics results from a conflict of interests, not of consciences.
 * p. 75

 * Before one begins to talk coalition, one should establish clearly the premises on which that coalition will be based. All parties to the coalition must perceive a mutually beneficial goal based on the conception of each party of his own self-interest. One party must not blindly assume that what is good for one is automatically—without question—good for the other.
 * p. 77

 * It should, however, already be clear that the building of an independent force is necessary; that Black Power is necessary. If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it, and that is precisely the lesson of the Reconstruction era. Black people were allowed to register, to vote and to participate in politics, because it was to the advantage of powerful white “allies” to permit this. But at all times such advances flowed from white decisions. That era of black participation in politics was ended by another set of white decisions. There was no powerful independent political base in the southern black community to challenge the curtailment of political rights. At this point in the struggle, black people have no assurance—save a kind of idiot optimism and faith in a society whose history is one of racism—that if it became necessary, even the painfully limited gains thrown to the by the Congress would not be revoked as soon as a shift in political sentiments occurs. (A vivid example of this emerged in 1967 with Congressional moves to undercut and eviscerate the school desegregation provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.) We must build that assurance and build it on solid ground.
 * p. 78

 * The advocates of Black Power are not opposed to coalitions per se. But we are not interested in coalitions based on myths. To the extent to which black people can form viable coalitions will the end results of those alliances be lasting and meaningful. There will be clearer understanding of what is sought; there will be greater impetus on all sides to deliver, because there will be mutual respect of the power of the other to reward or punish; there will be much less likelihood of leaders selling out their followers. Black Power therefore has no connotation of “go it alone.” Black Power simply says: enter coalitions only after you are able to “stand on your own.” Black Power seeks to correct the approach to dependency, to remove that dependency, and to establish a viable psychological, political and social base upon which the black community can function to meet its needs.
 * p. 80

 * Some people see the advocates of Black Power as concerned with ridding the civil rights struggle of white people. This has been untrue from the beginning. There is a definite, much-needed role whites can play. This role can best be examined on three different, yet interrelated, levels: educative, organizational, supportive. Given the pervasive nature of racism in the society and the extent to which attitudes of white superiority and black inferiority have become embedded, it is very necessary that white people begin to disabuse themselves of such notions. Black people, as we stated earlier, will lead the challenge to old values and norms, but whites who recognize the need must also work in this sphere. Whites have access to groups in the society never reached by black people. They must get within those groups and help perform this essential educative function.
 * p. 81

 * It is hoped that eventually there will be a coalition of poor blacks and . This is the only coalition which seems acceptable to us, and we see such a coalition as the major internal instrument of change in the American society. It is purely academic today to talk about bringing poor blacks and poor whites together, but the task of creating a poor-white power block dedicated to the goals of a free, open society—not one based on racism and subordination—must be attempted. The main responsibility for this task falls upon whites. Black and white can work together in the white community where possible. [...] Only whites can mobilize and organize those communities along the lines necessary and possible for effective alliances with the black communities. This job cannot be left to the existing institutions and agencies, because those structures, for the most part, are reflections of institutional racism. If the job is to be done, there must be new forms created. Thus, the political modernization process must involve the white community as well as the black.
 * p. 82

Chapter Four

 * “The law” became a convenient tool to be used by illegal masters when black people sought to move.
 * p. 95

 * Law is the agent of those in political power; it is the product of those powerful enough to define right and wrong and to have that definition legitimized by “law.” This is not to say that “might makes right,” but it is to say that Might makes Law.
 * p. 95

 * It became crystal clear that in order to combat power, one needed power. Black people would have to organize and obtain their own power base before they could begin to think of coalition with others. It is absolutely imperative that black people strive to form an independent base of political power first. When they can control their own communities—however large or small—then other groups will make overtures to them based on a wise calculation of self-interest. The blacks will have the mobilized ability to grant or withhold from coalition. Black people must set about to build those new forms of politics.
 * p. 96

 * Lowndes had one of the nation’s worst records for individual and institutional racism, a reputation for brutality that made white as well as black Alabama shiver. In this county, eighty-one percent black, the whites had ruled the entire area and subjugated black people to that rule unmercifully. [...] The history of the county shows that black people could come together to do only three things: sing, pray, dance. Any time they came together to do anything else, they were threatened or intimidated. For decades, black people had been taught to believe that voting, politics, is “white folks’ business.” And the white folks had indeed monopolized that business, by methods which ran the gamut from economic intimidation to murder.
 * p. 100

 * Lowndes was a truly totalitarian society—the epitome of the tight, insulated police state.
 * p. 100

 * What the master giveth, the master can take away.
 * p. 101

 * The act of registering to vote does several things. It marks the beginning of political modernization by broadening the base of participation. It also does something the existentialists talk about: it gives one a sense of being. The black man who goes to register is saying to the white man, “No.” He is saying: “You have said that I cannot vote. You have said that this is my place. This is where I should remain. You have contained me and I am saying ‘No’ to your containment. I am stepping out of bounds. I am saying ‘No’ to you and thereby I am creating a better life for myself. I am resisting someone who has contained me.” That is what the first act does. The black person begins to live. He begins to create his own existence when he says “No” to someone who contains him. But obviously this is not enough. Once the black man has knocked back centuries of fear, once he is willing to resist, he then must decide how best to use that vote. To listen to those whites who conspired for so many years to deny him the ballot would be a return to that previous subordinated condition. He must move independently. The development of this awareness is a job as tedious and laborious as inspiring people to register in the first place. In fact, many people who would aspire to the role of an organizer drop off simply because they do not have the energy, the stamina, to knock on doors day after day. That is why one finds many such people sitting in coffee shops talking and theorizing instead of organizing.
 * p. 104

Chapter Six

 * The town of Tuskegee, in Macon County, Alabama, is undoubtedly one of the most significant areas in the history of the black man in this country. People throughout the world know Tuskegee as the home base of Booker T. Washington, from 1881 to his death in 1915. He founded Tuskegee Institute in 1881 and he was widely acclaimed as the leader of black people during that period. Dr. George Washington Carver, the scientist, became a second great name; his accomplishments in the Tuskegee Institute science laboratory with peanuts and sweet potatoes made him internationally known and respected at a time when most whites and many blacks knew nothing of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, and other black intellectuals of that day.
 * p. 122

 * The black people should create rather than imitate—create new forms which are politically inclusive rather than imitate old racist forms which are politically exclusive.
 * p. 144

Chapter Seven

 * This country is known by its cities: those amazing aggregations of people and housing, offices and factories, which constitute the heart of our civilization, the nerve center of our collective being.
 * p. 146

 * The eruption in, in the spring of 1963 showed how quickly anger can develop into violence. Black people were angry about the killing of and Charles Mack Parker; the failure of federal, state and city governments to deal honestly with the problems of ghetto life. Now they read in the newspapers, saw on television and watched from the street corners themselves the police dogs and the fire hoses and the policemen beating their friends and relatives. They watched as young high-school students and women were beaten, as Martin Luther King and his co-workers were marched off to jail. The spark was ignited when a black-owned motel in Birmingham and the home of Dr. King’s brother were bombed. This incident brought hundreds of angry black people into the street throwing rocks and bottles and sniping at policemen. The echoes were far and wide.
 * p. 154

 * The core problem within the ghetto is the vicious circle created by the lack of decent housing, decent jobs and adequate education. The failure of these three fundamental institutions to work has led to alienation of the ghetto from the rest of the urban area as well as to deep political rifts between the two communities. In America we judge by American standards, and by this yardstick we find that the black man lives in incredibly inadequate housing, shabby shelters that are dangerous to mental and physical health and to life itself. [...] and highway clearance programs have forced black people more and more into congested pockets of the inner city. Since suburban zoning laws have kept out low-income housing, and the Federal Government has failed to pass open-occupancy laws, black people are forced to stay in the deteriorating ghettos. Thus crowding increases, and slum conditions worsen. [...] Here we begin to understand the pervasive, cyclic implications of institutional racism. Barred from most housing, black people are forced to live in segregated neighborhoods and with this comes de facto segregated schooling, which means poor education, which leads in turn to ill-paying jobs.
 * pp. 155-156

 * The basic story of education in Central emerges as one of inefficiency, inferiority and mass deterioration. It is a system which typifies colonialism and the colonist’s attitude.
 * p. 158

 * There can be no doubt that in today’s world a thorough and comprehensive education is an absolute necessity. Yet it is obvious from the data that a not even minimum education is being received in most ghetto schools. White decision-makers have been running those schools with injustice, indifference and inadequacy for too long; the result has been an educationally crippled black child turned out onto the labor market equipped to do little more than stand in welfare lines to receive his miserable dole.
 * p. 158

 * The struggle for employment has had a drastic effect on the black community. It perpetuates the breakdown of the black family structure. Many men who are unable to find employment leave their homes so that their wives can qualify for Aid to Dependent Children or welfare. Children growing up in a welfare situation often leave school because of a lack of incentive or because they do not have enough food to eat or clothes to wear. They in turn go out to seek jobs but only find a more negative situation than their fathers faced. So they turn to petty crime, pushing dope, prostitution (joining the Army if possible), and the cycle continues.
 * p. 160

 * Those of us who survive must indeed be a tough people.
 * p. 160

 * This country, with its pervasive institutional racism, has itself created socially undesirable conditions; it merely perpetuates those conditions when it lays the blame on people who, through whatever means at their disposal, seek to strike out at the conditions.
 * p. 161

 * Herein lies the match that will continue to ignite the dynamite in the ghettos: the ineptness of decision-makers, the anachronistic institutions, the inability to think boldly and above all the unwillingness to innovate. [...] And when the dynamite does go off, pious pronouncements of patience should not go forth. Blame should not be placed on “outside agitators” or on “Communist influence” or on advocates of Black Power. That dynamite was placed there by white racism and it was ignited by white racist indifference and unwillingness to act justly.
 * p. 162

Chapter Eight

 * We are aware that it has become commonplace to pinpoint and describe the ills of our urban ghettos. The social, political and economic problems are so acute that even a casual observer cannot fail to see that something is wrong. While description is plentiful, however, there remains a blatant timidity about what to do to solve the problems. Neither rain nor endless “definitive,” costly reports nor stop-gap measures will even approach a solution to the explosive situation in the nation’s ghettos.
 * p. 164

 * This country cannot begin to solve the problems of the ghettos as long as it continues to hang on to outmoded structures and institutions. A political party system that seeks only to “manage conflict” and hope for the best will not be able to serve a growing body of alienated black people. An educational system which, year after year, continues to cripple hundreds of thousands of black children must be replaced by wholly new mechanisms of control and management. We must begin to think and operate in terms of entirely new and substantially different forms of expression. It is crystal clear that the initiative for such changes will have to come from the black community. We cannot expect white America to begin to move forcefully on these problems unless and until black America begins to move. This means that black people must organize themselves without regard for what is traditionally acceptable, precisely because the traditional approaches have failed. It means that black people must make demands without regard to their initial “respectability,” precisely because “respectable” demands have not been sufficient.
 * pp. 164-166

 * If political institutions do not meet the needs of the people, if the people finally believe that those institutions do not express their own values, then those institutions must be discarded. It is wasteful and inefficient, not to mention unjust, to continue imposing old forms and ways of doing things on a people who no longer view those forms and ways as functional.
 * p. 176

Afterword

 * Our basic premise is that money and jobs are not the final answer to the black man’s problems. Without in any sense denying the overwhelming reality of poverty, we must affirm that the basic goal is not “,” as some have called the anti-poverty and other federal programs, but the inclusion of black people at all levels of decision-making. We do not seek to be mere recipients from the decision-making process but participants in it. [...] It is our hope that the day may soon come when black people will reject because they have understood that these programs are geared to pacification rather than to genuine solutions. We hope that the rising level of consciousness may bring a rejection of such doles. This will strike many readers as fantastic, but they might recall that once in India, Gandhi rejected relief food shipments from England precisely because he saw them as tools of pacification.
 * p. 183

Afterword, 1992

 * Afterword, 1992 by Kwame Ture.

 * In dialectics, we know everything contains positive and negative attributes. Reforms can be used to advance Revolution or to forestall Revolution. Dialectics inform us that when the negative dominates the positive in reform it becomes an obstacle on the road to freedom; it must give way to Revolution.
 * p. 188

 * We say, “If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.” We must precisely state that what we repeat is not history but our errors under ever-changing material conditions. History does not repeat itself; it cannot. Nothing can. The first law of the universe is everything changes, all the time. Only those who see history as events and not as a process can make this error.
 * p. 189

 * It is only mass struggle that advances us and only when the masses advance do we advance.
 * p. 190

 * Revolutionaries do not take to the path of spilling blood easily.
 * p. 190

 * Imperialism, trying to preserve itself in the face of the oppressed masses’ anticolonial struggle, presented neocolonialism to the masses. Neocolonialism means powerless visibility. You see an African president, but the entire country is controlled by France or Belgium or England—its former colonial master.
 * p. 191

 * The U.S.A. is a settler-colony; only the indigenous people are its just owners.
 * p. 191

 * Authors make errors, history, does not!
 * p. 192

 * One of the strategies of racism is to confuse the victims into believing all their victories should be awarded to the oppressor.
 * p. 193

 * Capitalism does not lie some of the time, it lies all of the time.
 * p. 193

 * The capitalist press simply records history, it never makes it; only the masses make history!
 * p. 194

 * The capitalist press supports reform movements which forestall Revolution; these reform movements come to depend on the press and even tailor their activities to fit headlines. The capitalist press wants to intoxicate the masses with this reform movement. Intoxicated reform “leaders” believe that political power grows out of the lens of press cameras, and the more lenses, the more power. Just political power comes only from the organized masses.
 * p. 194

 * History is. We cannot make it otherwise.
 * p. 194

 * The universal law of human nature: Where there is oppression there is resistance, and “where oppression grows, resistance grows.”
 * p. 194

 * The task of imperialism is to divide and rule, isolate and dominate.
 * p. 195

 * History is the unbroken march of struggle to advance humanity. Thus all struggles are connected, some more strongly than others.
 * p. 195

 * Human action is divided in relation to control into two domains, the conscious and the unconscious. History has its laws, which affect all in spite of ignorance of said laws. [...] One can fight for justice consciously or unconsciously, the laws of history dominate nonetheless. Thus the unconscious fighters’ energies are channeled in the process of history. Of course we can fight for injustice through.
 * pp. 195-196

 * Vietnam is clear, representing another of the tragedies of capitalism. Young men left the U.S.A., traveling 10,000 miles to a country they had never heard of before, actually believing they were sacrificing their lives to advance democracy, to advance history, when in fact they were fighting against themselves.
 * p. 196

 * Revolutionary history shows that the People do not nurse their wounds. After defeat, they begin immediately planning the next step in the forward ever march.
 * p. 197

Quotes about Stokely Carmichael

 * Only a young man would have been able to say it ("Black Power"). And only someone who was forged in a crucible outside the United States. It is very important to remember that Stokely, like Marcus Garvey, is West Indian and therefore his relationship to the deep South and all those highways was a very different one, profoundly different one. I admire Stokely very much, but his frame of reference from his childhood was not Georgia or Harlem, it's someplace else. He had another sense of identity which allowed him to say, as Martin Luther King could not and as Malcolm X had to say in another way, that if we don't have power, we can't change anything. That's a very good, logical statement coming from the West indies, and a very powerful statement coming from the deep South…It is very important that Stokely said it but what was even more important was the convulsion in the white American breast because he really put his finger on the root of the problem. They ain't never gonna give us anything. Such people never do give. They have to be menaced into doing it. They won't set us free until we have the power to free ourselves. That was the importance of it. What one has made of it is something else, on both sides of what we call the racial fence.
 * 1973 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)

 * The dues that Stokely had to pay behind it were extraordinary because it really got to the heart of the American problem, which is, who owns the banks? I'll put it another way. When the kids were marching down in the South, the North was vividly in sympathy with them. We knew that if it ever got to the North, the same Northern liberals, who praised all those kids on the highway and sent down all that money, would do the same thing in New York as was being done in Birmingham. And the same thing happened, except in New York, the enemy is in the bank. When the kids sat down in the bank, the very same policemen, for the very same reasons, did the very same things. That is when the movement changed. When Martin Luther King went to Chicago, they threw eggs at him and said we don't want dreams, we want jobs. ..The importance of what Stokely said, and the importance of what's been happening in the last ten years is that people in the street from Birmingham to New York, especially their children, have learned to understand the nature of the American hoax.
 * 1973 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)

 * The civil rights movement's biggest drawback is that they don't have a group that pays its own way. They don't have a membership group. This is the kind of power that is needed. Malcolm X was an organizer, but Stokely Carmichael is entirely different. I don't see any building. The approach that Malcolm X used was the house meeting. He was doing those things that we know pay: being patient and just accumulating, committing people and so forth. He's gone, but his spirit continues.
 * Cesar Chavez 1971 interview, anthologized in An Organizer’s Tale (2008)

 * Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and other black male leaders have righteously supported patriarchy. They have all argued that it is absolutely necessary for black men to relegate black women to a subordinate position both in the political sphere and in home life.
 * bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman (1981)

 * As Kwame Ture often said: "We need each other. We have to have each other for our survival." Take this admonition seriously. We should use the occasion of the indictment announcement to gather and to continue to build power together. This is how we will win.
 * Mariame Kaba, We Do This Til We Free Us (2021)

 * Jan Goodman vividly remembers January 4, 1965, the day the U.S. House of Representatives was to vote on a resolution to "unseat" the Mississippi delegation. In addition to presenting the depositions, the MFDP had brought six hundred Black Mississippians to lobby on Capitol Hill. "We had one of the most beautiful demonstrations of all. A silent vigil on the day of the vote to unseat. It was led by Stokely Carmichael in his early days-this was slightly before full-blown Black Power, probably around six months. They had this very peaceful, nonviolent demonstration in the tunnels of Congress. It was really incredible to watch. When the congressmen, and they were all men, came through, they had to go through a phalanx of two lines of Black groups who were totally, totally silent. And just glaring at them. It was quite dramatic and quite terrific."
 * Debra L. Schultz Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (2002)

title: Stokely Carmichael


text:
Last words in Shakespeare

The last words of characters in Shakespeare. In a minority of cases, a description of a character's off-stage death is included.

Antony and Cleopatra

 * I am dying, Egypt, dying:
 * Give me some wine, and let me speak a little. ..
 * The miserable change now at my end
 * Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts
 * In feeding them with those my former fortunes
 * Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world,
 * The noblest; and do now not basely die,
 * Not cowa

h'd. Now my spirit is going;
 * I can no more.
 * - Antony

 * As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle,--
 * O Antony!--Nay, I will take thee too.
 * What should I stay--
 * - Cleopatra, as she applies the second asp to her arm.

Hamlet

 * O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt!
 * - Claudius

 * O, I am slain!
 * - Polonius

 * He is justly served;
 * It is a poison temper'd by himself.
 * Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
 * Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
 * Nor thine on me.
 * - Laertes, talking of Claudius

 * O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
 * Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
 * If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
 * Absent thee from felicity awhile,
 * And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
 * To tell my story. ..
 * O, I die, Horatio;
 * The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
 * I cannot live to hear the news from England;
 * But I do prophesy the election lights
 * On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
 * So tell him, with the occurrences, more and less,
 * Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
 * - Hamlet

 * No, no, the drink, the drink!—O my dear Hamlet! —
 * The drink, the drink! I am poison’d.
 * - Gertrude

Henry IV, part 1
O, Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth! I better brook the loss of brittle life Than those proud titles thou hast won of me; They wound my thoughts worse than sword my flesh: But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool; And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy, But that the earthy and cold hand of death Lies on my tongue: no, Percy, thou art dust And food for--

Dies

Henry IV, part 2

 * Laud be to God! even there my life must end.
 * It hath been prophesied to me many years,
 * I should not die but in Jerusalem;
 * Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land:
 * But bear me to that chamber; there I'll lie;
 * In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
 * - King Henry IV

Henry V

 * a' parted even just between twelve
 * and one, even at the turning o' the tide: for after
 * I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with
 * flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew
 * there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as
 * a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 'How now,
 * sir John!' quoth I 'what, man! be o' good
 * cheer.' So a' cried out 'God, God, God!' three or
 * four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a'
 * should not think of God; I hoped there was no need
 * to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So
 * a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my
 * hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as
 * cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and
 * they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and
 * upward, and all was as cold as any stone.
 * - Mistress Quickly
 * They say he cried out of sack.
 * - Nym
 * Ay, that a' did.
 * - Mistress Quickly
 * And of women.
 * - Bardolph
 * Nay, that a' did not.
 * - Mistress Quickly
 * Yes, that a' did; and said they were devils incarnate.
 * - Boy describing Falstaff's death. Falstaff actually dies offstage.

Julius Caesar

 * Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!
 * - Julius Caesar

 * Caesar, thou art revenged,
 * Even with the sword that kill'd thee.
 * - Cassius

 * Caesar, now be still:
 * I kill'd not thee with half so good a will.
 * - Brutus, as he runs on his sword

King John

 * O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye:
 * The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd,
 * And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail
 * Are turned to one thread, one little hair:
 * My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
 * Which holds but till thy news be uttered;
 * And then all this thou seest is but a clod
 * And module of confounded royalty.
 * - King John

King Lear

 * And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
 * Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
 * And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
 * Never, never, never, never, never!
 * Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
 * Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
 * Look there, look there!
 * - King Lear

 * Slave, thou hast slain me: villain, take my purse:
 * If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body;
 * And give the letters which thou find'st about me
 * To Edmund Earl of Gloucester, seek him out
 * Upon the British party: O, untimely death!
 * - Oswald

Macbeth

 * I will not yield,
 * To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
 * And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
 * Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
 * And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
 * Yet I will try the last. Before my body
 * I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
 * And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
 * - Macbeth

 * He has kill'd me, mother:
 * Run away, I pray you!
 * - Macduff's son

O treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! Thou mayst revenge-O slave!
 * - Banquo

Othello

 * O, who hath done this deed?
 * - Emilia
 * Nobody; I myself. Farewell.
 * Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell!
 * - Desdemona

 * What did thy song bode, lady?
 * Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,
 * And die in music. [sings] 'Willow, willow, willow.'--
 * Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor;
 * So come my soul to bliss as I speak true;
 * So speaking as I think, I die... I die.
 * - Emilia

 * Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:
 * From this time forth I never will speak word.
 * - Iago, who does not die onstage, but who is being led to his immediate torture and eventual death.

 * Soft you; a word or two before you go.
 * I have done the state some service, and they know't.
 * No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
 * When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
 * Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
 * Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
 * Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
 * Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
 * Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
 * Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
 * Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
 * Albeit unused to the melting mood,
 * Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
 * Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;
 * And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
 * Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
 * Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
 * I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
 * And smote him, thus.
 * - Othello
 * Stabs himself
 * O bloody period!
 * - Lododvico
 * All that's spoke is marr'd.
 * - Gratiano
 * I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee: no way but this;
 * Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.
 * - Othello
 * Falls on the bed, and dies

Richard II

 * O, spare me not, my brother Edward's son,
 * For that I was his father Edward's son;
 * That blood already, like the pelican,
 * Hast thou tapp'd out and drunkenly caroused:
 * My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,
 * Whom fair befal in heaven 'mongst happy souls!
 * May be a precedent and witness good
 * That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood:
 * Join with the present sickness that I have;
 * And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
 * To crop at once a too long wither'd flower.
 * Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!
 * These words hereafter thy tormentors be!
 * Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
 * Love they to live that love and honour have.
 * - John of Gaunt

 * That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire
 * That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand
 * Hath with the king's blood stain'd the king's own land.
 * Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high;
 * Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.
 * - King Richard II

Richard III

 * Which of you, if you were a prince's son,
 * Being pent from liberty, as I am now,
 * if two such murderers as yourselves came to you,
 * Would not entreat for life?
 * My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks:
 * O, if thine eye be not a flatterer,
 * Come thou on my side, and entreat for me,
 * As you would beg, were you in my distress
 * A begging prince what beggar pities not?
 * - Clarence

 * Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
 * And I will stand the hazard of the die:
 * I think there be six Richmonds in the field;
 * Five have I slain to-day instead of him.
 * A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
 * - King Richard III, just before he engages in the fight with Richmond in which he dies.

 * Let's to it pell-mell
 * If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell!
 * - Richard III, Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine movie adaptation, taken from Richard's speech earlier in the play.

Romeo and Juliet

 * Here, here will I remain
 * With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
 * Will I set up my everlasting rest,
 * And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
 * From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
 * Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
 * The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
 * A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
 * Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
 * Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
 * The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
 * Here's to my love!
 * O true apothecary!
 * Thy drugs are quick. Thus, with a kiss, I die.
 * - Romeo

 * Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
 * What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's hand?
 * Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
 * O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
 * To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
 * Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
 * To make die with a restorative.
 * Thy lips are warm.

 * Yea, noise? then I'll be brief. O happy dagger!
 * This is thy sheath;
 * there rust, and let me die.
 * - Juliet

 * Help me into some house, Benvolio,
 * Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses!
 * They have made worms' meat of me: I have it,
 * And soundly too: your houses!
 * - Mercutio

 * Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here,
 * Shall with him hence.
 * - Tybalt

 * O, I am slain! If thou be merciful,
 * Open the tomb; lay me with Juliet.
 * - Count Paris

Titus Andronicus

 * O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb?
 * I am no baby, I, that with base prayers
 * I should repent the evils I have done:
 * Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
 * Would I perform, if I might have my will;
 * If one good deed in all my life I did,
 * I do repent it from my very soul.
 * - Aaron the Moor

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Last words in Shakespeare


text:
Newt Gingrich

Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (born Newton Leroy McPherson; June 17, 1943) is an American politician, historian, author and political consultant. He represented Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican from 1979 until his resignation in 1999, and served as the 50th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999.

Address to College Republicans, June 24, 1978

 * Transcript, A 1978 Speech By Gingrich | The Long March of Newt Gingrich,

 * I think that one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the camp fire, but are lousy in politics.

 * The only explanation I can give myself for spending two hours here is that one or two or three of you will become leaders, as a result of a slightly better understanding of what the term means. The first thing it means is taking risks. Because all of you, if you try to do anything, are going to make mistakes. That shouldn't bother you, because Lyndon Johnson, when he was forty years older than you, made mistakes and destroyed his presidency. Richard Nixon, when he was forty-five years older than you, made mistakes and destroyed his presidency. Jimmy Carter makes mistakes on a daily basis. None of those things should worry you, that's the nature of this business. We're all human and we all goof.

 * Everyone of you is old enough to have been a rifleman in Vietnam. A number of you are old enough to have been platoon leaders, or company commanders, depending on the situation, and how rapidly you move up in rank. This is the same business, we're just lucky, in this country, we don't use bullets, we use ballots instead. You're fighting a war. It is a war for power.

 * Do you like the state of the Republican Party? Do you think you ought to respect Bill Brock because he has done such a great job? Or Richard Nixon, or Gerald Ford, the only incumbent president since Herbert Hoover to lose an election? They have done a terrible job, a pathetic job. In my lifetime, literally in my lifetime, I was born in 1943, we have not had a competent national Republican leader. Not ever!

 * One of the great weaknesses of the Republican Party is we recruit middle-class people. Middle-class people, as a group, are told you should not shout at the table, you should be nice, you should have respect for other people, which usually means giving way to them. You want to go to the beach, they want to go to the movie, well, you ought to go to the movie, cause otherwise they'll get mad at you. So what do you do? We ended up going to Watergate because we didn't want to offend Richard Nixon. We ended up allowing Gerald Ford to do some things that were incredibly dumb, just unbelievably dumb. Gerald Ford personally cost me a congressional seat.

 * Now the reason I am being harshly critical is because I want you all to learn a lesson. When you see somebody doing something dumb, say it. You don't help your party any by neatly sitting off to one side and saying, "God I wish you weren't so stupid." You weaken your party. And when you say it, say it in the press, say it loud, fight, scrap, issue a press release, go make a speech.

1980s

 * The number one fact about the news media is they love fights. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate.
 * I see myself as representing the conservative wing of the postindustrial society.
 * You can have an active, aggressive, conservative state which does not in fact have a large centralized bureaucracy…This goes back to Teddy Roosevelt. We have not seen an activist conservative presidency since TR.

 * I'm the guy in the eighth grade who did not go across the floor and ask the girl to dance for two reasons. One is, she might say no and I'd be embarrassed; two, she might say yes and I'd have to dance…
 * There were long periods in my marriage when I was in enormous pain, and I did a lot of things during that time that reflect how much pain I was in. I am not going to argue every point of that story, but I will say that it painted a picture of me that is essentially untrue.
 * I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I'm doing it. Ronald Reagan uses the term 'opportunity society' and that didn't exist four years ago. I just had breakfast with Darman and Stockman because I'm unavoidable. I represent real power. And I can also, as an elected official, I can hold a press conference and that's a form of real power. The ambitions that this city focuses on are trivial if you're a historian. Who cares?

 * If Wright ever consolidates his power, he will be a very, very formidable man…We need to take him on early to prevent that.

 * The left-wing Democrats will represent the party of total hedonism, total exhibitionism, total bizarreness, total weirdness, and the total right to cripple innocent people in the name of letting hooligans loose.

 * The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.

 * The values of the left cripple human beings, weaken cities, make it difficult for us to in fact survive as a country…The left in America is to blame for most of the current, major diseases which have struck this society.
 * You’re gonna see weird things coming out of this city over the next few years, because you’re watching the death throes of the machine, and you’re watching its power to smear, and its power to intimidate. And the next time you hear anyone say, ‘Let’s fire Lee Atwater,’ the first thing you ought to know is…they are either left-wingers or they have been intimidated by left-wingers.

1990s

 * People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil around me every day.

 * I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. The only way you get change is to vote Republican.

 * It is impossible to maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, with 15-year-olds killing each other, with 17-year-olds dying of AIDS and with 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can’t even read.

 * There's something that doesn't fit about this whole case and the way it's been handled…I'm not convinced he didn't [commit suicide]. I'm just not convinced he did. I believe there are plausible grounds to wonder what happened and very real grounds to wonder why it was investigated so badly.

 * This is petty…You’ve been on the plane for 25 hours and nobody has talked to you, and they ask you to get off the plane by the back ramp…You just wonder, 'Where is their sense of manners? Where is their sense of courtesy?'

 * I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.

 * I'm willing to lead, but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals.

Contract with America, 1994

 * PDF, The Republican “Contract with America” (1994),

 * This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress
 * On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:

SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse

THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third

FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs

FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee

SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public

SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase

EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

Assortment of private notes, released January 17, 1997

 * Grandoni, Dino, ''On Gingrich's To-Do List: 'Articulate the Vision of Civilizing Humanity (December 8, 2011), '

Gingrich—Primary Mission

—Advocate of civilization

—Definer of civilization

—Teacher of the rules of Civilization

—Arouser of those who form Civilization

—Organizer of the pro-civilization activists

—Leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.

Priorities to 6/30/93

1. Articulate the vision of civilizing humanity and recivilizing all Americans (task 1)

2. Design general planning—management system and set up quarterly review at a general level (task 2, 9, 10, 11)

3. Build a House republican Team committed to professionalizing the House GOP and to becoming a majority and in particular building a team among the leadership and with our active House member patrons (task 6)

4. Building a volunteer-staff Team in the 6th Distr. (task 7)

5. Define, plan and begin to organize the movement for civilization and the effort to transform our welfare state into an opportunity society to help people achieve productivity, responsibility, and safety so they can achieve prosperity and freedom so they can pursue happiness (task 3, 5, 8)

6. Diet, exercise, recreational renewal with Marianne (task 9)

7. Begin to plan and develop the intellectual—educational effort to sustain in the vision of civilizing humanity and recivilizing America (task 4)

2000s

 * Alan Colmes: You're calling "appeasers" people who disagree with the Bush policy administration —
 * Gingrich: Look—
 * Colmes: — comparing them to those who enabled Hitler?
 * Gingrich: Yes.
 * Colmes: That's an astounding comment —
 * Gingrich: What's your — what's your — why? Why is it astounding?
 * Colmes: — that's a very insulting comment —
 * Gingrich: It's not an insulting comment.

 * We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.
 * Later claimed he was not referring to Spanish: "I never used the word Spanish in the conversation.".
 * Later claimed he was not referring to Spanish: "I never used the word Spanish in the conversation.".

 * There is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment.

2010s

 * Jefferson wanted very small government. Obama is the opposite -- he wants government to take care of you, a government that runs virtually everything.
 * The things Obama wants us to be bipartisan on are fundamentally wrong and have very little popular support.

 * I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a state…Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire.
 * I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community.

 * By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American.

 * We're not going to beat Barack Obama with some guy who has Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts, owns shares of Goldman Sachs while it forecloses on Florida and is himself a stockholder in Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac while he tries to think the rest of us are too stupid to put the dots together to understand what this is all about.
 * Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney? The fact is, you ran in '94 and lost. That's why you weren't serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating, you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn't have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what you do. You were running for president while you were governor.
 * It's just like this pretense that he's a conservative. Here's a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in 'Romneycare,' puts Planned Parenthood in 'Romneycare,' raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he's magically a conservative.

 * I endorse Donald Trump. I am going to work very hard for the nominee.
 * You are talking about a guy who was smart enough to build Trump Towers, build lots of hotels, build lots of casinos, and own the Miss Universe contest. He is not stupid. For many people, that seems to be inconceivable because they have a university Ph.D. theory of being smart.

 * I don’t know if I should say this, but it’s so much fun that I’m going to…Do you really want a two-pirate ticket?
 * I suspect sometime tomorrow that Mike and I will both get phone calls, and one of us will be packing our bags to go to New York and the other one will be going to watch it on TV.

 * Let me be as blunt and direct as I can be. Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported.

 * I'm going to go out on a limb tonight and you can keep this tape and remind me about it after the election, OK? Donald Trump’s going to win.
 * Donald Trump’s going to win because in the end the country is not going to reward big banks and big unions and big bureaucracies and big donors and big corruption by voting for a big liar. And in the end, the country is going to say, you know, whatever Trump's weaknesses may be, he's a sincere guy trying very hard to get this country back on the right track.

 * And you can quote me and use my voice saying it. The fact that someone was Vice-President does not make them immune to discovering whether they were involved in corruption. And it’s kind of astonishing to me that the American news media, in its passion for hating Trump, is wandering around saying, “Gee, it would be really terrible to ask the Ukrainians to find the truth.”
 * I will stipulate you are a human being.
 * I am fascinated and intrigued with the natural world, whether in its paleontological form or its current form. I am intrigued with watching how animals operate and what they do, and how different systems coexist. I think it is endlessly fascinating. Plus, I like them. I have dogs, I like them. I have given zoos rhinoceroses and a variety of other things, and it is fun. I just went to the zoo in Nagoya, Japan, which is actually a quite nice zoo.

2020s

 * If we want America to survive as a constitutional republic under the rule of law, which protects the right of free speech and is dedicated to the belief that each one of us is endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we have no choice but to fight to defeat the anti-Americans and reassert our nation. Reagan would understand. Lincoln would understand. Freedom itself is at stake.
 * "Three Generations of Brainwashing Is Paying off for the Left" (17 June 2020), Newsweek
 * I’ve been active in this since 1958. That’s 62 years. I am the angriest I have been in that entire six decades. You have a group of corrupt people who have absolute contempt for the American people, who believe that we are so spineless, so cowardly, so unwilling to stand up for ourselves that they can steal the presidency. And we will wring our hands, bring in a few lawyers and do nothing…The Philadelphia machine is corrupt. The Nevada machine is corrupt. The machine in Detroit is corrupt. And they are trying to steal the presidency. And we should not allow them to do that.
 * And I think we have to take this whole system apart and recognize that this is — this election is a great moment for the American people to decide do they want to have an honest election where they get to pick their leaders or do they just want corrupt machines such as the one that Stacey Abrams is building.
 * So I think this is going to be an extraordinarily important election, and I think the odds are very high that if every Republican will vote — my model is very simple, we have to win by a bigger margin than Stacey Abrams can steal.

 * He’ll remain a dominant figure for a fairly long period of time, depending on how hard he wants to work at it and how serious it is. People fade pretty quickly if they don’t pay attention. This is a country of enormous restiveness.
 * An immense amount got done but it’s also why the left hates Clinton. He signed welfare reform, he signed capital gains tax cut, he signed four balanced budgets. It’s nothing to do with his personal behavior. It’s very much like what happened to the prime minister in Great Britain, Tony Blair: both of them were centrist and both of them were viciously repudiated by their left even as they were popular in the country. It’s just fascinating stuff.

About Newt Gingrich

 * He’s articulate and he tries to think of a conservative version of an idea that will solve a legitimate problem.
 * Bill Clinton;.

 * He’s bright as hell, but I disagree with him.
 * Joe Biden;.

 * He’s a damn Republican, but I love him. He knows the government, he knows the issues…And I would feel better, even though we disagree philosophically — and I’m not being facetious — I’d feel better knowing that there’s somebody there with the depth and gravitas on the issues that Newt possesses.
 * Joe Biden;.

 * When Newt showed up, he said we can become the majority, we can take back the House of Representatives. We hadn't had the House since the 1940s. And initially, none of us believed it. But he was persistent and he was tenacious. He kept it up, kept it up, kept it up. And finally by '94 he's the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives with a Republican majority. So I wouldn't underestimate him.
 * Dick Cheney;.

 * The assault of the new conservatives--of Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Clarence Thomas and the rest of their pack--helped focus the march. African Americans read the message of the Gingrich-Dole agenda clearly. The deepest cuts in spending come not from programs benefiting the wealthy, the corporations, those who pay for their party. The cuts are targeted on the weak--poor mothers and children, the disabled, the elderly, the working poor. The cuts are targeted on the cities--on public housing, public health, public transportation, public water. To win support for this injustice, the poor and the urban are given a Black face, dismissed as hopeless genetically and culturally, and set up for the hit. The Gingrich-Dole strategy doesn't seem new or clever to African Americans; it seems but a tired sequel to the divisive politics of the old South. So the Million Man March called for a political recommitment. Gingrich and his crowd won the Congress by a cumulative total of 19,000 votes in 1994. Eight million eligible African Americans are not registred to vote. There was no conservative tidal wave; they won not because the wave was high, but because our walls were low.
 * Jesse Jackson, After the Million Man March, 22 October 1995,

 * Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican Party policy since May 2008. When gas prices soared to unprecedented heights, the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less," with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be-locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore-was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once.
 * Naomi Klein On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (2019)

 * It seems hard to believe today, but as recently as 2008, tackling climate change still had a veneer of bipartisan support, even in the United States. That year, Republican stalwart Newt Gingrich did a TV spot with Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, in which they pledged to join forces and fight climate change together…Those days of bipartisanship are decidedly over.
 * Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014)

 * He was the original polariser…He was also, very importantly, one of the architects of one of the most pivotal elections in modern American history, the midterm elections of 1994, when Republicans took over the House and the Senate for the first time since the first two years of Dwight Eisenhower. That election also greatly contributed to polarisation because it wiped out a lot of moderate southern Democrats and replaced them with very conservative southern Republicans.
 * Allan Lichtman;.

 * He's a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like.
 * Paul Krugman;.
 * Krugman attributed an nearly identical quote to Ezra Klein regarding Dick Armey in . Similar statements have been made about others as far back as Elizabeth Bowen writing of Aldous Huxley in The Spectator, 11 December 1936: "He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person."

 * I think we ought to send Newt Gingrich to the moon.
 * John McCain;.

 * If the Constitution gives me a way of forcing Newt Gingrich's feet to the fire, a way of forcing American politicians to live up to the letter of the law, then I'm going to do that.
 * 1996 interview in Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee Edited by Bradley C. Edwards (2009)

 * You deliberately stood in the well of this House and took on these members when you knew they would not be here…It's un-American…It's the lowest thing that I've heard in my 32 years here.
 * Tip O'Neill;.

 * take a step back, and you look at the absurdity...Big money dominates the economic life of our country. They decide whether our jobs go to China or reinvested in America. They own the political system. Republican Party had a fundraiser here last month, $16 million in one night. Gingrich goes out around the country, $10,000-a-plate fundraising. That’s the issue.
 * Bernie Sanders Interview with Democracy Now (1996)

 * Many who have heard my harsh assessments of Gingrich over the past year have assumed that I feel a personal animus toward my former colleague. That’s just not true. That fact is that I remain awestruck that Newt envisioned a Republican majority when his closest allies thought he was crazy. Even an eternal optimist like me laughed at the “Think Majority” sign hanging over the NRCC reception area in early 1994. But Newt was right and we were wrong. The Gingrich Revolution overtook Washington (with a huge assist from Bill Clinton’s overreaching agenda) and good things followed. Within a few years, Congress passed the first balanced budget in a generation, welfare reform, tax cuts and meaningful congressional changes. If Newt’s story ended there, I might have a Gingrich 2012 sign in my front yard. But unfortunately, it does not.
 * Joe Scarborough,.

 * On the one hand it's a lovely symbolism that the Dem slate in Georgia represents the old school civil rights coalition between black people and Jews. On the other, it's telling that the exact same tropes from then are being used by the gop in 2020
 * Adam Serwer 11/18/20 on Twitter, responding to Gingrich saying "Reverend Warnock is an extraordinarily radical candidate and essentially Ossoff is a product of Hollywood and Silicon Valley."

 * Let's face it…Gingrich saved our butt.
 * George Stephanopoulos;

 * Congratulations, Newt, on last night — that was an amazing interview…We don’t play games, Newt, right?
 * Donald Trump;.

title: Newt Gingrich


text:
Talk:Mexican proverbs

"En boca cerrada, no entran moscas": "The mouth that's closed, flies don't enter" or "Better to be seen and not heard."

"Antes que te cases, miro lo que haces": "Before marrying, look at what you are doing." or "look before you leap."

This is a common Mexican proverb. Meaning that the woman is the one that makes a house work, or to stay up.

"La casa no descansa en la tierra sino en la mujer" o "El peso de la casa no recae sobre la tierra sino sobre una mujer": "The house does not rest on the ground, but       on a woman."

95% of these "proverbs" are NOT Mexican, they from the motherland Spain, and most of the Spanish speaking countries use them, sometimes applying local variations.

Unsourced
"A caballo regalado, no se le mira el colmillo
 * "A caballo dado, no se le ve el colmillo"
 * Alternative:
 * "A caballo dado, no le busques el colmillo"
 * "You don't look a gift horse in the mouth"
 * Meaning, you don't inspect in detail that which was given.
 * Meaning: Don't complain about something given as a gift.

 * "A donde fueras, haz lo que vieras"
 * "Wherever you go, do as you see"
 * Meaning,Do what you see they're doing.
 * "When in Rome, do as the romans do"

 * "Agua que no has de beber, déjala correr"
 * "Water you are not going to drink, let it run"
 * Meaning, do not keep what you are not going to use. Mostly used in emotional conflict, and says to let go of ill feelings.

 * "Al mal paso, darle prisa"
 * "To bad steps, make them quick"
 * Meaning, if you have to do something that you don't like, do it fast to forget about it soon.

 * "Al mal tiempo, buena cara"
 * "To bad times, good face"
 * Meaning, be positive even in bad situations.

 * "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos"
 * "Breed crows and they will take your eyes out"
 * "You reap what you sow"

 * "Al que madruga, Dios lo ayuda"
 * "Who wakes up early, God will help"
 * Meaning, "if you start early, things will be easier or better." Also: "The early bird catches the worm"

 * "Árbol que crece torcido jamás su tronco endereza"
 * Alternatives:
 * "Árbol que nace torcido jamás su tronco endereza"
 * "Rama que sale torcida jamás su tronco endereza"
 * "Tree which grows bent will never get straight again"
 * Meaning, that which starts wrong will never get right. Used also about the formation and education of children.

 * "Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente"
 * "Shrimp that sleeps gets carried by the tide"
 * Meaning, if you get distracted (or asleep), you will be left behind; or you snooze you lose.

 * "Cuando el río suena es que agua lleva"
 * Alternatives:
 * "Si el río suena es que agua lleva"
 * "Si el río suena es porque piedras lleva"
 * "If the river sounds it is because it is carrying water"
 * "If the river roars, rocks hauls"
 * Meaning, if there are rumors, there must be some truth behind them. Or, where there's smoke there's fire.

 * "Dan más donde no conocen"
 * meaning: Sometimes, you get a better service from a total stranger's business than from a friend's business.

 * "Donde hubo fuego cenizas quedan"
 * "Where there was fire, ashes remain"
 * Meaning, there is always something left of the events that happen. Usually this "refrán" is used in passional themes, where there was love, there is always some left. Or talking about an old flame.

 * "Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres"
 * "Tell me who you are with and I will tell you who you are"
 * Meaning, you will be seen to be like the people you hang around with. Therefore, if your hanging out with a bad crowd, people are going to think that you are bad.

 * "El burro trabaja doble"
 * "The donkey works twice as much"
 * "A jackass works twice as much"
 * Work smart; focus on quality and not quantity (donkey is considered a stupid animal)
 * When you do your work half-heartedly, sometimes you will need to do that work again.

 * "El miedo no anda en burro"
 * "Fear does not travel by donkey"
 * Meaning, People are not dumb, they won't do things that are clearly dangerous (because they are afraid)

 * "El indio no tiene la culpa sino el que lo hace compadre"
 * "It is not the indian's fault but of the one who teaches him"
 * Be careful no to assign responsibility to someone who does not have the proper qualifications to handle it.

 * "El muerto al pozo y el vivo al gozo"
 * Alternatives:
 * "El muerto al hoyo y el vivo al pollo"
 * "To the dead interrment and to the living enjoyment"
 * Meaning, to stop mourning the dead and keep going with life. Mostly it is used as a metaphor for continuing to enjoy life despite its problems.

 * "El muerto y el arrimado a los tres días apesta"
 * "Corpses and annoying guests stink by the third day"
 * Meaning, annoying guests can become a nuisance if they stay for long.

 * "El que calla otorga"
 * "He, who is silent consents"
 * meaning, if you don't say anything, you'll agree to what I say.

 * "El que no habla, Dios no lo oye"
 * Alternatives:
 * "El que no chilla no mama"
 * "He, who does not speak, God does not hear"
 * Meaning, to be heard it is needed to speak or the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

 * "El que se fue a la villa perdió su silla"
 * "Who leaves to (or goes to) his villa lost his seat"
 * Meaning, who leaves his chair may lose it. Used when someone leaves a chair and someone else takes it or finders keepers.

 * "En boca cerrada, no entran moscas"
 * "In a closed mouth, flies do not enter"
 * Meaning, a person who does not judge will not get judged.
 * Meaning, do not give more information than needed.
 * English equivalent: "Silence is golden" or "mum's the word"

 * "En la casa del herrero, azadón de palo"
 * Alternatives:
 * "En casa del herrero, cucharas de palo"
 * "In house of the blacksmith, wooden hoe"
 * Meaning, that where the resources abound, those are not used. "The cobbler's children have no shoes.".

 * "La mula no era arisca, la hicieron"
 * Alternatives:
 * "La mula no era arisca, la hicieron a palos"
 * "The mule was not easily frightened, it was made that way"
 * Meaning, that people (or animals, in this case) can acquire certain behaviors as result of the actions of others. This "refrán" is mainly to illustrate that an animal can become permanently frigthtened or easily lose temper by constantly abusing and hitting it, and so too can a person.

 * "Las piedras rodando se encuentran"
 * "The stones keep rolling"
 * "Even the stones meet sometimes"
 * Meaning, events are moving along.
 * Meaning: people who knows each other will probably cross ways some other time in the future.

 * "Matrimonio y mortaja del cielo bajan"
 * "Marriage and shroud, from heaven will come"
 * Meaning, both good and bad things come by themselves.

 * "Más vale un pájaro en mano que ver un ciento volar"
 * "A bird in hand is worth more than a hundred in flight"
 * Meaning, something certain is better than a lot of uncertain.

 * "Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo"
 * "The devil knows more for being old than for being the devil"
 * Meaning, that experience means more than a name.

 * "Nadie escarmienta en cabeza ajena"
 * Alternatives:
 * "Nadie asienta en cabeza ajena"
 * "Nadie experimenta en cabeza ajena"
 * "Nobody learns in the head of someone else"
 * Meaning, nobody learns through the experience of someone else. You should make your own mistakes.

 * "Nadie tropieza dos veces con la misma piedra"
 * "Nobody trips twice with the same stone"
 * Meaning, nobody should commit the same error twice.
 * Meaning: Nobody DOES commit the same error twice. The second time, it is his fault. Or, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

 * "Ni tanto que queme al santo, ni tanto que no lo alumbre"
 * "Not so much that it burns the saint, or so little that it does not shed a light on him"
 * Meaning, extremes are not useful.

 * "No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano"
 * "No matter how early you rise the dawn comes no earlier"
 * Meaning, there are some things that we cannot hurry or accelerate, even if we try.

 * "No todo lo que brilla es oro"
 * "Not everything that glimmers is gold"
 * Meaning, not everything that has a good appearance has good quality, or don't take anything for granted.

 * "No hay mal que por bien no venga"
 * "There is no bad that comes without a good"
 * Meaning, for everything bad that happens, there is also something good. Always look for the positive side of things.

 * "No le pidas peras al olmo"
 * "Do not ask pears from an elm"
 * Meaning, do not ask something from someone who can not do the job.

 * "Papelito habla"
 * "Little paper speaks"
 * Meaning, that you must have proof of what you claim. (a legal document)

 * "Si de tu vecino ves la barba cortar, pon la tuya a remojar"
 * "If you see your neighbor has shaved his beard, you should start lathering yours"
 * Meaning, if you see a change occur around you, prepare yourself for the change.

Because anything faster than a donkey is clearly the devils work
 * No way I'm returning to Mexico. I can't stand being in a place more surreal than my paintings.
 * Salvador Dalí, referring to Mexico's socio-economical contrast and cultural richness

title: Talk:Mexican proverbs


text: User talk:24.44.126.24

title: User talk:24.44.126.24


text:
User talk:61.127.151.174

Hi. I have blanked your addition of a coverage piece of Shintaro Ishihara to the wikiquote talk page. The talk page is for discussion related to the entry (formatting, proper attribution and so forth). For discussion regarding the person, I am sure your contributions would be appreciated on Wikipedia. Thanks for your consideration! MosheZadka 06:45, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:61.127.151.174


text:
Category:Austrian School economists

This category is for economists who are part of the Austrian School.

title: Category:Austrian School economists


text:
User talk:Netoholic

jni 08:41, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Netoholic