June Jordan Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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No one should feel peculiar living
as they do.

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

June Jordan
Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

June Jordan
A way outa no way is flesh outa flesh,
Bravery kept out of sight.

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

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

June Jordan
There oughta be a woman can break down
Sit down, break down, sit down.

June Jordan
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
Be afraid.

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

June Jordan
Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires...

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

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
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
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
Sometimes we become so sophisticated we have to read the New York Times in order to figure out whether it's a hot or a rainy day.

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
Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

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
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
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
Let me just say, at once: I am not now nor have I ever been a white man. And, leaving aside the joys of unearned privilege, this leaves me feeling pretty good...

June Jordan
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
I do believe that the analogy for bisexuality is a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multiracial world view. Bisexuality follows from such a perspective and leads to it, as well.

June Jordan
Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie.

June Jordan
Because what I wanted was
to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my
self so fully be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
not pity
be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
your love

June Jordan
Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?

June Jordan
In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.

June Jordan
I care because I want you to care about me. I care because I have become aware of my absolute dependency upon you, whoever you are, for the outcome of my social, my democratic experience.

June Jordan