185 Quotes by Assata Shakur

Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars. But you, me, and tomorrow hold hands and make vows that struggle will multiply. The hacksaw has two blades. The shotgun has two barrels. We are pregnant with freedom. We are a conspiracy.

My fantasy of Cuba was that everybody was going to be going around looking like Fidel, with green uniforms – and it was very different from my vision of how Cuba was going to be.

We found out later that a lone Black juror had refused to convict us. He had heard us.

In my case, spirituality has been important to me because at periods in my life there’s been very little else that I’ve had going. I’ve actually needed to call on, to feel the forces of good in this universe to be able to survive.

Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

It sometimes seems that people in the states are so accustomed to watching death on “Eyewitness News,” watching people starve to death in Africa, being tortured to death in Latin America or shot down on Asian streets, that, somehow, for them, people across the ocean – people “up there” or “down there” or “over there” – are not real.

I had grown up believing the slaves hadn’t fought back. I remember feeling ashamed when they talked about slavery in school.

Tourism has affected Cuba, because tourists come and they bring racist, sexist ideas. They bring a whole vision that there are rich people all over the world and that’s the way it should be.

This planet is a wonderful place, but a vulnerable place.