George L. Jackson > Quotes

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”
― George L. Jackson

“I've been patient, but where I'm concerned patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“It's very contradictory for a man to teach about the murder in corporate capitalism, to isolate and expose the murderers behind it, to instruct that these madmen are completely without stops, are licentious, totally depraved — and then not make adequate preparations to defend himself from the madman's attack. Either they don't really believe their own spiel or they harbor some sort of subconscious death wish.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I repeat: realistic, day-to-day needs should be the basis of organizing people and making them conscious of revolution-- that the world, the universe, must revolve-- that it will stop, stagnate, and die for no man's privilege.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“Right now, we are in a peak cycle. There’s tremendous energy out there, directed against the state. It’s not all focused, but it’s there, and it’s building. Maybe this will be sufficient to accomplish what we must accomplish over the fairly short run. We’ll see, and we can certainly hope that this is the case. But perhaps not. We must be prepared to wage a long struggle. If this is the case then we’ll probably see a different cycle, one in which the revolutionary energy of the people seems to have dispersed, run out of steam. But – and this is important- such cycles are deceptive. Things appear to be at low ebb, but actually what’s happening is a period of regroupment, a period in which we step back and learn from the mistakes made during the preceding cycle.”
― George L. Jackson

“The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to make isolation impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression to affect the normal life style of as many members of society as possible. By compromising and playing at class war, we lose.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“This Vietnam adventure on the part of the fascist has vastly changed the whole relationship between the masses and the ruling class. Can you detect the subtle changes? The really ugly side of imperialism is being demonstrated for not just the people who suffer its effects abroad, but also to the sleepy little guy here inside the U.S. They're starting now to make the link between foreign wars and foreign businesses.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“You can generally tell what processes a man's mind has gone through by what he's studied, observed.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“Western culture developed out of a very hostile environment. Rocks, snow, ice, long periods when the ground was too hard to be worked, when nothing could be produced from the soil, hunting became too important; accumulating, hoarding, hiding, protecting enough to last through the winter, things falling apart in winter, covetous glances at one’s neighbor’s goods. Would three or four thousand years of that kind of survival influence a culture? Would greed color itself into the total result, in a large way? Hunt, forage, store, hoard, hide, defend, the thing at stake!! Not very conducive to sensitivity, tenderness.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“We don’t want to capitalize on people anyway. Capitalism is the enemy. It must be destroyed. There is no other recourse”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“We're going to have to fight to win. The logic of procrastination has been destroyed. A people can never be so repressed that they can't strike back in some way. We will purge the poltroons and fight. Or just ignore them.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“Neoslavery is an economic condition, a small knot of men exercising the property rights of their established economic order, organizing and controlling the life style of the slave as if he were in fact property. Succinctly: an economic condition which manifests itself in the total loss or absence of self-determination.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Right here at this juncture of time we as a people have nothing, absolutely nothing but each other, some fresh air, the blue and gold of day and silver at night, a clean conscience, and the promise of cloudless days to come. But”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Strength is being able to control yourself and your total environment—yourself first, however.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“in every instance they are sent out of the prison more damaged physically and mentally than when they entered. Because that is the reality. Do you continue to investigate the inmate? Where does administrative responsibility begin? Perhaps the administration of the prison cannot be held accountable for every individual act of their charges, but when things fly apart along racial lines, when the breakdown can be traced so clearly to circumstances even beyond the control of the guards and administration, investigation of anything outside the tenets of the fascist system itself is futile.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“can still smile sometimes, but by the time this thing is over I may not be a nice person. And I just lit my seventy-seventh cigarette of this 21-hour day. I’m going to lay down for two or three hours, perhaps I’ll sleep … Seize the Time.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“The apologists recognize that these places are controlled by absolute terror, but they justify the pig’s excesses with the argument that we exist outside the practice of any civilized codes of conduct. Since we are convicts rather than men, a bullet through the heat, summary execution for fistfighting or stepping across a line is not extreme or unsound at all. An official is allowed full range in violent means because a convict can be handled no other way.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“If you don’t make any more in wages than you need to live, you are a neoslave. You qualify if you cannot afford to leave California for New York. If you cannot visit Zanzibar, Havana, Peking, or even Paris when you get the urge, you are a slave. If you’re held in one spot on this earth because of your economic status, it is just the same as being held in one spot because you are the owner’s property.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I didn’t create this impasse. I had nothing to do with the arrival of matters at this destructive end, as you infer. Did I colonize, kidnap, make war on myself, destroy my own institutions, enslave myself, use myself, and neglect myself, steal my identity and then, being reduced to nothing, invent a competitive economy knowing that I cannot compete”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I could go on all week about how your tax money is being used, but let it suffice for me to say it is not being used to help you or yours. You are getting no return on your investment. This is what taxes are supposed to be all about, an investment in the community, the society, a pooling of each individual’s resources so that the administration can be financed, so that the administration can perform the jobs which must be done to ensure public welfare, and the jobs which no individual can do well alone. Now it follows that if everyone pays, everyone should get proper returns. The streetlights should be the same in Watts and Bel Air. It seems that some dereliction of duty has indeed taken place. George”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Pigs come here to feed on the garbage heap for two reasons really, the first half because they can do no other work, frustrated men soon to develop sadistic mannerisms; and the second half, sadists out front, suffering under the restraints placed upon them by an equally sadistic-vindictive society. The sadist knows that to practice his religion upon the society at large will bring down upon his head their sadistic reaction. Killing is great fun, but not at the risk of getting killed (note how they squeak and pull out their hair over losing even one). But the restraints come off when they walk through the compound gates. Their whole posture goes through a total metamorphosis. Inflict pain, satisfy the power complex, and get a check. How can the sick administer to the sick. In the well-ordered society prisons would not exist as such. If a man is ill he should be placed in a hospital, staffed by the very best of technicians. Men would never be separated from women. These places would be surfeited with equipment and meaningful programs, even if it meant diverting funds from another, or even from all other sectors of the economy. It’s socially self-destructive to create a monster and loose him upon the world.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“She was saying that I should be indifferent about being used and abused like a goat or milk cow or something. I understand her and all black women over here. Women like to be dominated, love being strong-armed, need an overseer to supplement their weakness. So how could she really understand my feelings on self-determination. For this reason we should never allow women to express any opinions on the subject, but just to sit, listen to us, and attempt to understand. It is for them to obey and aid us, not to attempt to think.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“My life means absolutely nothing without positive control over the factors that determine its quality.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I understand her and all black women over here. Women like to be dominated, love being strong-armed, need an overseer to supplement their weakness. So how could she really understand my feelings on self-determination. For this reason we should never allow women to express any opinions on the subject, but just to sit, listen to us, and attempt to understand. It is for them to obey and aid us, not to attempt to think.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“It is just as a leader of black thought that I disagreed with him. The concept of nonviolence is a false ideal. It presupposes the existence of compassion and a sense of justice on the part of one’s adversary. When this adversary has everything to lose and nothing to gain by exercising justice and compassion, his reaction can only be negative.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“A sweat-shop displaced the plantation.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“As a woman I can understand your being naturally disposed to servitude.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I can only be executed once.”
― George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye

“But how much longer will this last for me in and out of prison, for you in and out of debt, for the others of our kind who suffer jail, mental institutions, and the like. How long will we be forced to live this life, where every meal is an accomplishment, where every movie or pair of shoes is a fulfillment, where circumstance never allows our children to develop past a mental age of sixteen.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson