28 Quotes by Ilyasah Shabazz

I'm not meant to be part of the things that are wrong with the world, but neither am I meant to run from them. I'm meant to fight against them. I can't hold my own in the ring, but out in the world, I do know how to fight. With words. With truth.

We are simply spirits in a shell. The body is merely a covering, a casement for the soul.

Life is not a destination; it is a journey. Faith makes everything possible. In order to succeed in life, we must first believe that we can.

We could recite passages from Shakespeare and legends about African kingdoms going back thousands of years. We could share facts about the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration of a people in the history of humankind, and about the great military strategist Queen Nzingah, who defended the nation of Angola against Portuguese invaders in a powerful effort to destroy the slave trade entirely.

Mom talked a good game about the power of blackness, but she knew that the white world held even more power. You just needed to find a way to break in.

Love is always a big deal.

Papa, who instructed us to always hold our heads up, who promised us we were worthy, who assured us we were descended from kings – and from architects and farmers and healers and visionaries – no matter what all the hateful people in the world had to say about us.

But just because you have a bad season doesn’t mean you stop planting.

It’s easier, I guess, to laugh and joke and pretend that tomorrow won’t be any different from any of the days before. Easier than trying to talk about how strange it is to be part of a family and still be all alone.