Violence

Is violence only physical? Is it always bad? Learn from the minds of these influential African-Americans.

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.
Pearl Bailey

I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence.
Malcolm X

I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.
Malcolm X

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.
Malcolm X

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolute night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
Martin Luther King, Jr, Why Can?t We Wait

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.
Malcolm X

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
Martin Luther King, Jr

On the one hand, the guns were there to help capture the imagination of the people. But more important, since we knew that you couldn't observe the police without guns, we took our guns with us to let the police know that we have an equalizer.
Bobby Seale

Our position was: If you don't attack us, there won't be any violence; if you bring violence to us, we will defend ourselves.
Bobby Seale, Bobby Seale Interview

Our society has gotten to the point where we might soon become less and less shocked by any kind of violence.
Stanley Crouch

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.
Bill Cosby

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose.
James Earl Jones

Violence is a part of America. I don't want to single out rap music. Let's be honest. America's the most violent country in the history of the world, that's just the way it is. We're all affected by it.
Spike Lee

We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.
Harriet Tubman

We're the most violent nation on earth. There's no getting away from that. But you've got to look at it on a broader level.
Spike Lee

When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.
Stanley Crouch

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
Ernest Gaines