134 Quotes by Angela Davis

I don't think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do. I think that what is important about the sustained demonstrations that are now happening, is that they are having the effect of refusing to allow these issues to die.

Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.

The process through which imprisonment developed into the primary mode of state-inflicted punishment was very much related to the rise of capitalism and to the appearance of a new set of ideological conditions.

I have a hard time accepting diversity as a synonym for justice. Diversity is a corporate strategy.

But at the same time you can't assume that making a difference 20 years ago is going to allow you to sort of live on the laurels of those victories for the rest of your life

The food we eat masks so much cruelty. The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds. The fact that we look no further than the commodity itself, the fact that we refuse to understand the relationships that underly the commodities that we use on a daily basis. And so food is like that.

Justice is indivisible. You can't decide who gets civil rights and who doesn't.

Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?