Eldridge Cleaver - America Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

View all Eldridge Cleaver Quotes
It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jet liner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot's seat.

Eldridge Cleaver
They were murderers and they still are, but policemen are like dogs on a leash.… The police function under political direction. They go after whoever they are sent after, and that's where the problem comes in.… Black people were moving out of their traditional position in America. Nobody knew what to do about it. The white politicians were confused, the blacks were confused.… the police were told to go out, stop those civil-rights marches … and they went out and did that. When you talk to police now who participated in that, you find out that they were in the same position we were in — just trying to find the right formula.

Eldridge Cleaver
Pig power in America was infuriating, but pig power in the communist framework was awesome and unaccountable.

Eldridge Cleaver
If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.

Eldridge Cleaver
The racist conscience of America is such that murder does not register as murder really, unless the victim is whiteblacks knew that white blood is the coin of freedom in a land where for four hundred years black blood has been shed unremarked and with impunity.

Eldridge Cleaver
I can understand J. Edgar Hoover, because he wasn't inaccurate.… He said that we were the main threat. We were trying to be the main threat. We were trying to be the vanguard organization. J. Edgar Hoover was an adversary, but he had good information. We were plugged into all of the revolutionary groups in America, plus those abroad. We were working hand-in-hand with communist parties here and around the world, and he knew that.

Eldridge Cleaver