Marcus Garvey Quotations

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.

With confidence, you have won before you have started.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.

Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa.

The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.

Ethiopia shall once more arise from the ashes of material ruin to the heights of temporal glory.

Look to Africa, for there a king will be crowned.

Up, you mighty race, accomplish what you will.

We see a new Ethiopia, a new Africa, stretching her hands of influence throughout the world, teaching man the way of life and peace, The Way to God.

Whatsoever things common to man, that man has done, man can do.

Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm.

Africa has become the big game of the nation hunters. Today, Africa looms as the greatest commercial, industrial and political prize in the world.

Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.

Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.

Glorious shall be the battle when the time comes to fight for our people and our race.

I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.

There is no force like success, and that is why the individual makes all effort to surround himself throughout life with the evidence of it; as of the individual, so should it be of the nation.

I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.

There shall be no solution to this race problem until you, yourselves, strike the blow for liberty.

This hour we are stretching forth our hands with the desire to teach the world the true principles of mercy and justice.

If the enemy could only know that Marcus Garvey is but a John the Baptist in the wilderness, that a greater and more dangerous Marcus Garvey is yet to appear, the Garvey with whom you will have to reckon for the injustice of the present generation.

Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.

You may call me a Klansman if you will, but, potentially, every white man is a Klansman, as far as the Negro in competition with whites socially, economically and politically is concerned, and there is no use lying.

I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free.

Real men laugh at opposition; real men smile when enemies appear.

A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.

We welcome the opposition of the world, because we are determined to see the battle through. Africa's battle-cry is not yet heard.

Africa for the Africans... at home and abroad!

The enemies are not so much from without as from within the race.

Marcus Garvey does not give a snap for anything human but justice, and that which is based upon righteousness.

Up, up, you mighty race!/ You can accomplish/ what you will.

I read "Up From Slavery" and then my dream -- if I may so call it -- of being a race leader dawned.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together.

Unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their own.

Let us not try to be the best or worst of others, but let us make the effort to be the best of ourselves.

Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and so long as a race or people expose themselves to the danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be reduced to slavery.

Take the kinks out your mind, not your hair.

I like honesty and fair play.

Be as proud of your race today as our as our fathers were in days of yore. We have beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.

If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modern civilization and die from the effects of it.

Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the constellation of nations.

Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life.

The white man has succeeded in subduing the world by forcing everybody to think his way....The white man's propaganda has made him the master of the world, and all those who have come in contact with it and accepted it have become his slaves.

Negro producers, Negro distributors, Negro consumers! The world of Negroes can be self contained. We desire earnestly to deal with the rest of the world, but if the rest of the world desire not, we seek not

They subjugate first, if the weaker peoples will stand for it; then exploit, and if they will not stand for SUBJUGATION nor EXPLOITATION, the other recourse is EXTERMINATION.

Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and realized the light of their own freedom.

Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.

You must not mistake lip-service and noise for bravery and service.

Being satisfied to drink the dregs from the cup of human progress will not demonstrate our fitness as a people to exist alongside of others, but when of our own initiative we strike out to build industries, governments, and ultimately empires, then and only then will we as a race prove to our creator and to man in general that we are fit to survive and capable of shaping our own destiny.

They said that the Negro had no initiative; that he was not a business man, but a laborer; that he had not the brain to engineer a corporation, to own and run ships; that he had no knowledge of navigation, therefore the proposition was impossible. Oh! ye of little faith. The Eternal has happened.

Black men of Carthage, Ethiopia, of Timbuktu and Alexandria gave the likes of civilization to this world

The Greatest Weapon Used Against the Negro is Disorganization.

I pray God that we shall never use our physical prowess to oppress the human race, but we will use our strength, physically, morally and otherwise to preserve humanity and civilization.

We are not engaged in domestic politics, in church building or in social uplift work, but we are engaged in nation building.

The only protection against INJUSTICE in man is POWER?Physical, financial and scientific.

It is by education that we become prepared for our duties and responsibilities in life. If one is badly educated he must naturally fail in the proper assumption and practice of his duties and responsibilities,

I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite object of helping the people, especially those of my race, to know, to understand, and to realize themselves.

The greatest possesion of man is character

Every man has a right to his own opinion. Every race has a right to its own action; therefore let no man persuade you against your will, let no other race influence you against your own.

At no time within the last five-hundred years can one point to a single instance of the Negro as a race of haters.

Great principles, great ideals know no nationality.

Present day statesmen are making the biggest blunder of the age if they believe that there can be any peace without equity and justice to all mankind.

Go to work! Go to work in the morn of a new creation... until you have... reached the height of self-progress, and from that pinnacle bestow upon the world a civilization of your own.

If I die in Atlanta my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa’s glory.

When the facts of history are written Haile Selassie of Abyssinia will go down as a great coward who ran away from his country to save his skin and left the millions of his countrymen to struggle through a terrible war that he brought upon them because of his political ignorance and his racial disloyalty.

The power that holds Africa is human, and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done, man can do.

Billions of dollars have been lost to the Negro race within the last fifty years through disloyalty on the part of successful Negroes, who have preferred to give away their fortunes to members of other races, than to bequeath them to worthy institutions and movements of their own to help their own people.

The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.

Let us prepare TODAY. For the TOMORROWS in the lives of the nations will be so eventful that Negroes everywhere will be called upon to play their part in the survival of the fittest human group.

It is only the belief and the confidence we have in a God why man is able to understand his own social institutions, and move and live like a rational human being.

Africa with 400 million Black People can do it. If you cannot do it, if you are not prepared to do it then you will DIE. You race of cowards, you race of imbeciles, you race of good for-nothings, if you cannot do what other men have done, what other nations have done, what other races have done, THEN YOU HAD BETTER DIE.

God Almighty created each and every one of use for a place in the world, and for the least of us to think that we were created only to be what we are and not what we can make ourselves, is to impute an improper motive to the Creator for creating is.

We were the first Fascists, when we had 100,000 disciplined men, and were training children, Mussolini was still an unknown. Mussolini copied our Fascism.

Fascism is the cult of organised murder , invented by the arch-enemies of society . It tends to destroy civilization and revert man to his most barbarous state. Mussolini and Hitler might well be called the devils of an age, for they are playing hell with civilization.

There is no humanity before that which starts with yourself.

A happy but miserable state in which man finds himself from time to time; sometimes he believes he is happy by loving, then suddenly he finds how miserable he is. It is all joy, it sweetens life, but it does not last. It comes and goes, but when it is active, there is no greater virtue, because it makes one supremely happy.

It is unfortunate that we should find ourselves at this time the only disorganized group. Others have had the advantage of organization for centuries, so what seems to them unnecessary, from a racial point of view, becomes necessary to us, who have had to labor all along under the disadvantage of being scattered without a racial aim or purpose.

American suffragist, speech "Is Woman Suffrage Progressing?" at Stockholm, Sweden Radicalism is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom.

To have built up a new organization, which was not purely political, among Negroes in America was a wonderful feat, for the Negro politician does not allow any other kind of organization within his race to thrive.

The history of a movement, the history of a nation, the history of a race is the guide-post of that movement's destiny, that nation's destiny, that race's destiny.

No two persons think alike, even if they outwardly profess the same faith, so we have as many religions in Christianity as we have believers.

Death is the end of all life in the individual or the thing; if physical, the crumbling of the body into dust from whence it came. He who lives not uprightly, dies completely in the crumbling of the physical body, but he who lives well, transforms himself from that which is mortal, to immortal.

Behind the murder of millions of Negroes annually in Africa is the well organized system of exploitation by the alien intruders who desire to rob Africa of every bit of its wealth for the satisfaction of their race and the upkeep of their bankrupt European countries.

I read "Up From Slavery" and then my dream - if I may so call it - of being a race leader dawned.

The traitor of other races is generally confined to the mediocre or irresponsible individual, but, unfortunately, the traitors among the Negro race are generally to be found among the men with the highest place in education and society, the fellows who call themselves leaders.

Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is at hand!

The whole world is run on bluff.

There is nothing in the world common to man, that man cannot do.

Why should not Africa give to the world its Black Rockefeller, Rothschild and Henry Ford? Now is the opportunity. Now is the chance for every Negro to make every effort toward a commercial, industrial standard that will make us comparable with the successful business men of other races.

The UNIA teaches our race self-help and self-reliance... in all those things that contribute to human happiness and well-being.

We must give up the silly idea of folding our hands and waiting on God to do everything for us. If God had intended for that, then he would not have given us a mind. Whatever you want in life, you must make up your mind to do it for yourself.

A people without the knowledge of...

We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.

Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.

Always try to associate with people from whom you can learn something. All the knowledge that you want is in the world, and all you have to do is go and seek it.

Ambition is the desire to go forward and improve one's condition. It is a burning flame that lights up the life of the individual and makes him see himself in another state. To be ambitious is to be great in mind and soul. To want that which is worth while and strive for it. To go on without looking back, reaching to that which gives satisfaction.

Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden...

If we as a people realized the greatness from which we came we would be less likely to disrespect ourselves.

If you get up everyday and you don't learn you are a fool