June Jordan Quotes

54 Sourced Quotes

Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?

June Jordan
We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

June Jordan
But everybody needs a home
so at least you have someplace to leave
which is where most other folks will say
you must be coming from.

June Jordan
We need everybody and all that we are. We need to know and make known the complete, constantly unfolding, complicated heritage that is our black experience. We should absolutely resist the superstar, one at a time mentality that threatens the varied and resilient, flexible wealth of our Black future.

June Jordan
Who can choose between the worst possibility
and the last.

June Jordan
Describe me broken mast
adrift but strong
regardless what may
come along.

June Jordan
What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart?

June Jordan
I do not believe that we can restore and expand the freedoms that our lives require unless and until we embrace the justice of our rage. And, if we do not change the language of current political discourse, if we do not reintroduce a Right and Wrong, a Good or Evil measurement of doers and deeds, then how shall we, finally, argue our cause?

June Jordan
These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?

June Jordan
She loved poetry
sometimes I thought that she would take the words
and eat them carefully as filaments of saffron.

June Jordan
Suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you — who you really are — do survive.

June Jordan
'Mos anytime you see whiteman spose to fight each other an' you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an' they huffin' an' puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the real deal come down evil on someday don' have no shirt an' tie, somebody don' live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.

June Jordan
We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin in the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about...

June Jordan
In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.

June Jordan
A democratic state is not proven by the welfare of the strong but by the welfare of the weak.

June Jordan
And if i if i ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate i o- bey in lieu of impulse and realities (the blossoming flamingos of my wild mimosa trees) then let love freeze me out. (from i must become a menace to my enemies)

June Jordan
The United States Supreme Court, once a reliable if ultimate recourse for progressive and even revolutionary grievances, has become a retrograde wellspring for enormous economic and social distress.

June Jordan
The neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity—the incredibly outgoing energy—of righteous rage.

June Jordan
The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.

June Jordan
Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine.

June Jordan
What's important about poetry in the context of leadership is that most of the time, power has to do with dominance. But poetry is never about dominance. Poetry is powerful but it cannot even aspire to dominate anyone. It means making a connection. That's what it means.

June Jordan
Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.

June Jordan
Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.

June Jordan
When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives

June Jordan