Mumia Abu-Jamal famous quotes

03-26-2025

Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law there is the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and the genocide of millions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Order #Law #People
At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles I repeat: Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Blessed #White #America
When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Talking #Justice #Causes
Contrary to popular belief, conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empiresâ€¦ But what history really shows is that today`s empire is tomorrow`s ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Believe #Fighting #Exercise
The United States is Fast Becoming One of the Biggest Open-Air Prisons on Earth
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Air #Earth #Becoming
Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them. Maybe we serve children the best simply by noticing them.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Children #Opposites #Evil
Conventional wisdom would have one believe...
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Believe #Conventional Wisdom
Many claim that it is insane to resist the system; but actually, it is insane not to.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Insane #Claims
The state would rather give me an uzi than a microphone.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Giving #Microphones #States
The role of television is the illusion of company, noise. I call it the fifth wall and the second window: the window of illusion.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Wall #Roles #Television
If the Constitution can be used against one, it can be used against all.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Constitution #Used
Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Self #Soul #Degradation
here and there in the barrios and the favelas, among those who have least, beat hearts of hope, fly sparks of Overcoming.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Heart #Favelas #Sparks
I spend my days preparing for life, not preparing for death.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Preparing For Death #Preparing
Very few people in prison have voices that go beyond the wall. It's my job to do the work for them because they have no one.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Jobs #Wall #Voice
Today's empire is tomorrow's ashes
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Today #Ashes #Empires
If they survive, today's children will inherit a world that our fathers and grandfathers have ravaged, where the seas are acidic cesspools that the whales have fled, where rain forests are Indian memories never to return, and where human greed has plundered Mother Earth's innards and turned human genes into factories for profit. They will inherit a diminished planet where fresh water is increasingly rare, and where fresh air is a commodity... We live in a world that fears and hates its young. How else can one explain the bequest of such a foul, polluted, and hollow inheritance?
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Mother #Children #Memories
The media, itself an arm of mega-corporate power, feeds the fear industry, so that people are primed like pumps to support wars on rumor, innuendo, legends, and lies.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#War #Lying #Media
I was punished for communicating,
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Communicate
Free people have a right to decide for themselves what they want to hear.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#People #Want
I have learned not to do predictions. It's not helpful, psychologically. I don't sit and fret about things.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Helpful #Predictions #I Have Learned
I think because I came into journalism by way of the Black Panther Party - and not J-school or a corporate bourgeois institution - I tried to do news, writing and reporting that had social, political and racial content and context.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Party #School #Writing
Politics is the art of making the people believe that they are in power, when in fact, they have none.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#Art #Believe #People
Before this generation goes on to its ancestors, we should, we must, do our level best to pass on our lessons, so that they live in our people's minds and lives.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal

#People #Mind #Generations

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