Imamu Amiri Baraka Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people what to do with their money.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
I am inside someone
who hates me. I look
out from his eyes. Smell
what fouled tunes come in
to his breath. Love his
wretched women.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
We are beautiful people
with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with african eyes, and noses, and arms,
though we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters when what we want is sun.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
I am a soul in the world: in
the world of my soul the whirled
light from the day
the sacked land
of my father.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Words have users, but as well, users have words. And it is the users that establish the world's realities.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
The films of Warhol, when they are about anything are about sucking people off. This can be high art, to people who are interested in sucking people off.
But that will not liberate Black people.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
We are unfair, and unfair
We are black magicians, black art
s we make in black labs of the heart.
The fair are
fair, and death
ly white
The day will not save them
and we own
the night.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Time to get
together
time to be one strong fast black energy space
one pulsating positive magnetism, rising
time to get up and
be
comebe
come.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
Who owned the slave ship
Who run the army
Who the fake president
Who the ruler
Who the banker
Who/ Who/ Who/

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?

Imamu Amiri Baraka
The name change seemed fitting to me... and not just the meaning of the name Blessed Prince, but the idea that I was now literally being changed into a blacker being. I was discarding my "slave name" and embracing blackness.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
It's so diffuse
being alive. Suddenly one is aware
that nobody really gives a damn.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Saturday mornings we listened to Red Lantern & his undersea folk. At 11, Let's Pretend/& we did/& I, the poet, still do, Thank God!

Imamu Amiri Baraka
If you are black, the only roads into the mainland of American life are through subservience, cowardice, and loss of manhood. These are the white man's roads.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Smile, jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew...I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank...

Imamu Amiri Baraka
James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
The torture of being the unseen object, and the constantly observed subject.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Lately, I've become accustomed to the way The ground opens up and envelops me Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
You can't steal nothing from a white man, he's already stole it, he owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall motherfucker this is a stick-up!

Imamu Amiri Baraka
Walk it slow where you go walk it slow... We in the world Poor as dirt Don't get some rhythm Somebody'll get hurt the world is black the world is green the world is red, yellow, brown the world is mean

Imamu Amiri Baraka
The landscape should belong to the people who see it all the time.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
And now each night, I count the stars. And each night I get the same number. And when the stars won't come to be counted, I count the holes they leave.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
To name something is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass.

Imamu Amiri Baraka
& love is an evil word. Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean? An evol word.

Imamu Amiri Baraka