African Americans

"I still endure repression at the hands of the pigs, as do my peers. I still take a principled stand against this repression. But above all else, I am working on bringing my peers into a principled ideological and political consciousness that will give them discipline and a cause to struggle for, while simultaneously imparting to them the correct methods of mass based struggle. The pigs’ response continues to be to isolate me. Their violence has proven futile. Even in this most totalitarian of environments, innovation and relentless commitment to an ideal has proven, to my satisfaction, that the oppressive institutions are not invulnerable. Fear is our greatest hindrance. Fear and half measures. They can isolate me, but they cannot isolate an ideal."

"Most people don’t quite relate US prisons to government sponsored torture. We can thank the mainstream corporate media and politicians for this. Since the 1960s and 1970s they’ve persistently projected the false image of US prisons as resorts where criminal predators eat chips, lift weights, and watch videos all day, much like the images given of slavery as an experience that Black folks actually enjoyed. These false images are sustainable because the real world of prisons is a hidden one, concealed behind walls and razor wire, inaccessible to the public."

"What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that I’d expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation until a few days after being there. The pigs had a tier of handpicked proxy prisoners, whom they used to violently suppress those who got out of line. The ringleader – I’ll call him Pumpkin – was a career con with a reputation for butchering other prisoners. He had a trustee job (all trustees were similarly selected). Pumpkin was allowed by the pigs to keep weapons on his person. Part of the mental terror game was that while he was out cleaning (everyone knew he was a pig hit man and stayed armed), the pigs would bring others out around him in handcuffs. ... The next day or so the pigs would put them on the exercise yard together, remove everyone’s handcuffs except the target’s (they’d put five to seven prisoners in each pen), and allow them to mob attack the still handcuffed target. Or if they wanted him butchered, he’d be unhandcuffed and left to contend unarmed against a knife-wielding Pumpkin."

"I appeared frequently in the courts – state and federal – for hearings and trials. Initially, I received routine compliments from judges – and grudgingly from defense attorneys – on my legal comprehension and ability. This all changed when I persisted in efforts to have the courts comply with the laws. I refused to accept the unwritten rule that certain issues are not to be challenged or exposed. My efforts were calculated to bring the courts to bear on DOC officials at the highest levels, to force them to change the conditions under which we lived, and conform them to basic requirements of the written laws. The courts had other plans. The state courts were not willing to grant these sorts of relief, although the letter of the law required it. They attempted instead, numerous times, to grant my release from prison."

"With the added psychological deterrent of litigation, my clashes with the pigs declined somewhat in frequency. They focused primarily on isolating me from others. Their efforts to perpetuate a discontinuity in our unity has been the pigs’ only effective weapon against me. And they’ve admitted in a thousand ways that their greatest fear is ending up with many other prisoners on their hands who think and act as I do. Their isolating me was long a tactic that I could not devise an effective countermeasure against, that is, until after 2001, when I was first exposed to revolutionary theory and have since come to understand the role of ideology. Without a unifying ideology, there can be no unity of struggle. Ideology was something I’d never had, and thus something I could not share. The prisoners who’d united in struggle with me had done so because of me. Not because of a shared principle. Therefore, when I was no longer around, they lost the initiative to struggle on."

"When I hit reset every 24 hours, in my mind I'm in competition with myself and whatever I did the day before, to keep topping how I did it... that's how I measure if I'm any greater in my action steps towards my greatness."

"I say if your fear of criticism is stronger than your desire for success, you've failed in thought, long before action."

"I credit my plant-based diet with giving me the energy and stamina to help carry my teams to four NBA championship wins. … Veganism has become a transformative part of my life and I have made it my mission to share the power of plant-based eating with the world. … Vegan eating is not just a slam dunk for human health; it’s also the most effective way to combat climate change, according to a 2010 report by the United Nations. … going vegan is one of the best things a person can do for their health, for animals, and for the environment."

"Robert Parish and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the two reasons I became a vegetarian fully in the first place. They where the first ones I saw and I was 27 at the time and there was an article about Robert Parish and one of his martial art forms and I remember playing against this guy and asking him how he was running up and down the court with me and I was in my twenties. He said, "you have to learn to pace yourself young fella". … Then I would go, "well then your car has no gas" and I thought about that. So at 27 I made the change. … I had a good career but Robert Parish had a view to look at stats and a better career. If I would have known how to take care of my body … then I would have played until I was 40 as well."

"Yeah. I just wanna say RIP to Juanita Beauregard; that’s our mother and she just passed February 2nd and I want the world to know about her. She was a good woman."

"She put up with all our noise in the bedroom, because we started off with a little studio in our bedroom. And our room was right next to her and pops’ bedroom, so they couldn’t stand the noise because we made a lot of racket and we had other rappers coming in all the time, and they put up with that. And plus, she listened to a lot of soul music when we was growing up so that influenced us. And in church. She tried to make us go to church but we just didn’t tend to stick with it."

"Of course, of course. Even though if it wasn’t for what happened previously, all the success we had previously, it’s not like you can come straight from an underground record to Oscar status and be recognised by the people at the Academy. Me and Paul had a conversation about this actually when I got out of jail. I congratulated him because I came out like the day before it came on and I was like: ‘I’m proud of you’. And he told me: ‘Well don’t be proud of me because we couldn’t have did it without all the stuff you did’."

"I never left Three 6. I’ve always been a part of Three 6. I did some time and that was holding the group back and I don’t wanna hold my brother back — you know Paul’s my half-brother. They just went on doing they thing, and it’s like a breach of contract when you go to jail so it fucked up things with Sony. They had just released a double platinum album and the Oscar single for the Hustle & Flow soundtrack and stuff, so I just had to wait. But I’m about to join back up with ’em though. Me and my brother at least are gonna do some more of that underground stuff that we did in the first place, you know, the ‘Come With Me To Hell’ type stuff, and maybe there may be a surprise Three 6 thing in the future, but we still discussing that."

"I found my thrill On Blueberry Hill On Blueberry Hill When I found you."

"Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday Got to work like a slave all day Here come Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday I'm so tired got no time to play"

"You made me cry, when you said goodbye Ain't that a shame My tears fell like rain Ain't that a shame You're the one to blame"

"I hope people who should have known better then, understand now that Giuliani succeeding Dinkins was an outcome of similar forces that led to Trump succeeding Obama."

"They call, they call me the fat man 'Cause I weight two hundred pounds All the girls they love me 'Cause I know my way around."

"You can be anything you want to be. You can be a street sweeper, if you want. Just be the best blasted street sweeper you can be . . . And, you know you can be mayor."

"We borrowed money, it helped us with bonds and what not, and the Federal Government backed it, but it was a guarantee, it was not a grant. And we not only paid it off, but we paid it off ahead of time."

"So it's a mistake for someone to think that they bailed New York out. They did assist us, for which we are grateful, but it's a mistake to say we bailed New York out by giving them a grant of money to help those poor people who throw it away on welfare."

"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."

"The art and culture that is New York, communications, finance, all these things help make up New York. The rest of the country should be happy that we are what we are."

"Today, certain people file for bankruptcy, businesses and individuals, and it no longer has the stigma it once had. Now it's almost considered wise, a way to regroup and come back again."

"I was checking out all the bats he had and kind of rubbing a couple of them on me to get a little bit of luck. It’s pretty impressive what he swung, for someone his size, too. You see the pictures of him, I’m thinking this guys’ 6-5, 6-6 but you hear he was maybe 5-11, 5-10. It’s pretty impressive he was able to swing something like this and produce the numbers he did."

"I think his future is extremely bright. I think he had an unbelievable season. I don’t think I would have predicted that he would be an MVP candidate . . . That’s a lot to ask from a rookie to be an MVP type of candidate. I think the sky’s the limit for this kid. And again, he’s a natural-born leader. And that doesn’t happen at an age where he’s at, where people look to him, and it’s already happening."

"He is putting on the most amazing display I think I have ever seen!"

"We didn’t win the World Series. How are we satisfied with that? That’s what we want. That’s why we work, that’s why we train, that’s why we do everything in the offseason, the cage work. Everything is to get an opportunity to win a World Series. We came up short."

"Getting my first chance to play in front of crowds like that, situations like that, is going to be huge for us going on. We have a lot of young guys on this team, and getting as far as we did is going to be beneficial down the road for us."

"It was fun. It was fun coming to the ballpark and competing with these guys. If we were down, if we were up, it didn’t matter. We were always having fun. It was a joy."

"Christian. Faith, Family, then Baseball. If what you did yesterday still seems big today, then you haven't done anything today!"

"I told Gene after the end of the first season that I would not be returning to the show — that I wanted to return to my first love, which is musical theatre, but I didn’t know that meeting a Star Trek fan would change my life. I was told a fan wanted to meet me, and I turned and looked into the face of Dr. Martin Luther King — I was breathless. He said, "Yes, I'm the Trekker — I'm a Star Trek fan." And he told me that Star Trek was one of the only shows that his wife Coretta and he would allow their little children to stay up and watch. I thanked him — and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face and he said: "You can’t do that." He said "Don’t you understand that for the first time, we’re seen as we should be seen? You don’t have a Black role — you have an equal role." And on I went back to work on Monday morning. I went to Gene’s office and told him what had happened over the weekend. And he said, "Welcome home. We have a lot of work to do.""

"Star Trek represented, and still does represent, the future we can have, a future that is beyond the petty squabbles we are dealing with here on Earth, now as much as ever, and are able to devote ourselves to the betterment of all human kind by doing what we do so well: explore. This kind of a future isn't impossible — and we need to all rethink our priorities to really bring that vision to life."

"Gene's whole vision was that minorities weren't on set because we were minorities, we were on set because in the future our diverse world would all be working together as equals. I understand that everyone needs to see role models that can inspire them and talk to them and represent them, but I believe we need to move to a future that transcends race, gender, or anything else. We're all people."

"Look, friend, I'm really not interested in all of that, really. See I consider myself damned lucky to have been able to land my airplane at this emergency strip in one piece."

"[T]he lawlessness, rioting, men like Stokely Carmichael acting as if they speak for the Negro people. They aren't, and set civil rights back 100 years!"

"I'm not disgusted. I'm a citizen of the United States of America and I'm no second-class citizen either and no man here is, unless he thinks like one and reasons like one and performs like one. This is my country and I believe in her, and I will serve her, and I'll contribute to her welfare whenever and however I can. If she has any ills, I'll stand by her until in God's given time, through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the entire nation, she will put them right."

"“People can be bad for certain things. They could be bad around children. They could be bad with power. Are those people all ‘bad’? Could be. Maybe they need to get kicked off the planet. I don’t know. Each thing is individual. There aren’t rules for how we can or should think about something. We don’t have to believe everything we’re hearing. At least I don’t think we do. I’m glad I don’t watch this stuff.”"

"“I think it’s necessary. The world creates things up out of prayers that people pray and have. Things begin to move accordingly to how we all collectively think. When you see collectives moving on something you know that there’s going to be some kind of mass migration to a higher place, and I see that in the world as a whole, not just in America. I see it all over the globe. People are organizing and fusing together to make change, and it’s inspiring. I think it’s part of the natural order of things. We’re evolving, and what helps us evolve is social media. Social media is social evolution. It’s sparking a great change.”"

"“I don’t regret anything. I don’t like to make people feel uncomfortable or bad. But people are very sensitive in this climate. It’s very understandable. I totally understand. I get mad with them. I get it…But no. I would never take back a message of love…I’m sorry that it was misunderstood. But not sorry for saying it because it was from a place of love. And sometimes that happens.”"

"“I consider myself a performance artist more than a recording artist. The stage is where I feel the most comfortable in expressing who I am, where I am, discovering things about myself. It's more therapy than it is a job. Recording is like perfecting a moment, where performing live is just creating a moment. And I love the feeling of creating that thing that just disappears and evaporates into time. You have it on your phone or video but for me, it's over after the moment. And there's something really beautiful about being able to just let go of something after you create it.”"

"“I can see the evidence of that when I listen to music or hear young artists talk and they’re not shy at all about telling me thank you for the things I’ve contributed to them.”"

"“I’ve learned so many things since then. I’ve changed in a way that involves elimination for the sake of evolution. There’s less emphasis on trying to figure things out. It’s about letting things be. I’m focusing on listening to the silence underneath everything. That’s what I try to connect with. I can listen to the silence right here, right now while we’re talking, and it feels so good. I’m in love with the silence.”"

"Discipline is important, we need to be more focused on what we put into our bodies."

"I've been vegan for two years and vegetarian for 20 years. I used to be a dancer, and so health and vitality have always been important to me. I wouldn't say it took any one big event, vegetarianism just always made sense to me. [What farmed animals] endure is just terrible. It's horrible … Vegan food is soul food in its truest form. Soul food means to feed the soul. And, to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure."

"Art is my religion."

"SWAT teams, battering rams, and no-knock warrants (immortalized by Gil Scott Heron and written about by James Baldwin), all predate contemporary hyper-militarized police forces."

"There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay."

"You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out."

"The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox."