Quotes

Never give your money away outside of your race.

I like honesty and fair play.

Let us think and build for greatness

The greatest possession of man is character.

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

Up, you mighty race, accomplish what you will.

Progress is the attraction that moves humanity.

Be Black, buy Black, think Black, and all else will take care of itself!

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

Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.

Black men, you were once great. You shall be great again.

I would prefer to be honestly wealthy, than miserably poor.

When all else fails to organize the people, conditions will.

I am a Negro. I make absolutely no apology for being a Negro.

The home of the Negro race is all over the world. You must attend to them first before you think of others.

It is better that you be dead than having no purpose in life.

We refuse to be followers any more. We are leading ourselves.

The world does not count races and nations that have nothing.

A man's bread and butter is only insured when he works for it.

The greatest weapon used against the Negro is disorganization.

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

We have to build factories in America; control plantations in the West Indies and Africa; we have to start industrial enterprises here, there and everywhere and find employment for our scattered millions.

I am the equal of any white man; I want you to feel the same way.

The race can only be saved through a solid industrial foundation.

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

Do not remove the kinks from your hair. Remove them from your brain!

We believe in the supreme authority of our race in all things racial.

So long as there is need in your race, attend to it first and always.

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

To see your enemy and know him is a part of the complete education of man.

You must live so clean that everybody can see the cleanliness of your life.

A man must be a man, a woman must be a woman, while a child must be a child.

No Negro should be objectless or purposeless in life. Always have a purpose.

Take advantage of every opportunity; where there is none, make it for yourself.

What you do today that is worthwhile, inspires others to act at some future time.

You should tell the people that it is an honor to be Black and that nothing is wrong with the black skin but bad conditions.

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

'Radical' is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom.

Races and peoples are only safeguarded when they are strong enough to protect themselves.

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

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

We are entitled to our own opinions and not obligated to or bound by the opinions of others.

Love yourself better than anybody else. All beauty is in you and not outside of you. God made you beautiful. Confine your affection to your own race and God will bless you and men will honor you.

Organization is a great power in directing the affairs of a race or nation toward a given goal.

Make yourself a success and other people will follow your advice, because they see success in you.

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

No one is ever too old to learn. Therefore, you should take advantage of every educational facility.

We have a beautiful history, and we will create another in the future, which will astonish the world.

We demand complete control of our social institutions without interference by any alien race or races.

For over three hundred years the white man has been our oppressor, and he naturally is not going to liberate us to the higher freedom, the truer liberty, and the truer democracy. We have to liberate ourselves.

Let every day, every hour and every minute count in your life for something done, something accomplished.

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

Let us work with our hearts, soul and minds to see that everything is accomplished for the good of the race.

Rise up Black Men, and take your stand. Reach up black men and women and pull all nature’s knowledge to you.

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

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

The thing to do is to get organized; keep separated and you will be exploited, you will be robbed, you will be killed. Get organized, and you will compel the world to respect you.

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

The Negro to be employed and to be his own employer, must have his independent farms, stores, factories and mills.

No success ever came from the top, it is always from the bottom up. The Negro must learn to climb from the bottom up.

The race needs men of vision and ability... men of character and above all men of honesty, and that is so hard to find.

There is nothing that someone else has done in the triumph of a cause that you cannot do if you go about it in the right way.

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

Everybody knows that there is absolutely no difference between the native African and the American and West Indian Negroes, in that we are descendants from one common family stock. It is only a matter of accident that we have been divided and kept apart for over three hundred years.

Find something tangible to do and use your time in doing it well. It is better that you be dead than having no purpose in life.

To live for something doesn't only mean something for yourself, but something for your kith and kin and something for your race.

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

It is your mind that rules the body. You cannot go further than that mind to seek truth and to know truth and to react to truth.

The Negro will have to build his own industry, art, sciences, literature, and culture before the world will stop to consider him.

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.

It is absolutely necessary that the Negro builds an economic structure sufficiently strong enough to feed the arteries of his existence.

The Negro needs a nation and a country of his own, where he can best show evidence of his own ability in the art of human progress.

The man without a business of his own or without training to perform a particular type of job is always at a disadvantage in making a living.

Without commerce and industry, a people perish economically. The Negro is perishing because he has no economic system, no commerce and industry.

We realize that it is only when the Negro has successfully established himself economically that he can rule politically, socially and otherwise.

We who make up this organization know no turning back. We have pledged ourselves even unto the last drop of our sacred blood that Africa must be free.

The whole world is run on bluff. No race, no nation, no man has any divine right to take advantage of others. Why allow the other fellow to bluff you?

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

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.

The world today is indebted to us for the benefits of civilization. They stole our arts and sciences from Africa. Then why should we be ashamed of ourselves?

Hail! United States of Africa-free! Country of the brave black man's liberty; State of greater nationhood thou hast won, A new life for the race is just begun.

Let no man, let no power on earth, turn you from this sacred cause of liberty. I prefer to die at this moment rather than not to work for the freedom of Africa.

We have reached the time when every minute, every second must count for something done, something achieved in the cause of Africa. We need the freedom of Africa now.

Tear from your walls, all pictures that glorify other races. Tear up and burn every bit of propaganda that does not carry your idea of things. Treat them as trash.

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

We are the descendants of the men and women who suffered in this country for two hundred and fifty years under that barbarous, that brutal institution known as slavery.

I am not opposed to the white race as charged by my enemies. I have no time to hate anyone. All my time is devoted to the up-building and development of the Negro race.

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.

We are not to become satisfied with the educational system of the white man which has been devised by him for his own purpose; to lead others to obedience to his system.

The American Negro should should link himself up with the West Indian Negro, and with the African Negro, to build up among themselves a world trade in commerce and industry.

In a world of wolves one should go armed, and one of the most powerful defensive weapons within the reach of Negroes is the practice of race first in all parts of the world.

If you haven't confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

No one knows when the hour of Africa's redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming. One day, like a storm, it will be here. When that day comes all Africa will stand together.

If a father lives for something, he ought to be able to see his children through that something, so that what he does not accomplish for himself might be accomplished for his children.

Every Negro’s interest must come first in all the things of humanity. Not until you have served every Negro in the world should you seek to be kind to others. Charity begins at home.

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.

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.

Go to work! Go to work in the morn (morning) 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.

There is always a turning point in the destiny of every race, every nation, of all peoples, and we have come now to the turning point of the Negro, where we have changed from the old cringing weakling, and transformed into full-grown men, demanding our portion as men.

I have a vision of the future, and I see before me a picture of a redeemed Africa, with her dotted cities, with her beautiful civilization, with her millions of happy children, going to and fro.

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 is something in you that is individual, that nobody else has. Try to bring it out and let that be your individuality and personality; for which people will remember you and talk about you.

Following God and heaven's example, there is no reason why the Negro should not have his and when he doesn't he is not living the proper life in accordance with the purpose for which nature made him.

In your desire to accomplish greatness, you must first decide in your own mind in what direction you desire to seek that greatness, and when you have so decided in your own mind work unceasingly towards it.

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own creative 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.

The men of the highest morals, highest character and noblest pride are to be found among the masses of the Negro race who love their women with as much devotion as white men love theirs.

In climbing the heights to where we are today, we have had to surmount difficulties, we have had to climb over obstacles, but the obstacles were stepping stones to the future greatness of this cause we represent.

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.

You demand a new leadership! A leadership that will not give up when the hour seems dark,... a leader that will start and continue the journey until victory perches upon the banner of the red, the black and the green.

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.

If we live in our own district, let us rule and govern those districts. If we have a majority in our communities, let us run those communities. We form a majority in Africa and we should naturally govern ourselves there.

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.

The value of knowledge is to use it. It is not humanly possible that a person can retain all knowledge of the world, but if a person knows how to search for all the knowledge of the world, he will find it when he wants it.

The Negro should indulge in every kind of business that is necessary to earn profit; because it is by profit that he will be able to obtain life's necessities for himself and his race.

We hear among Negroes the cry of 'Africa for the Africans.' This cry has become a positive, determined one. It is a cry that is raised simultaneously the world over because of the universal oppression that affects the Negro.

Tell Negro parents that they must teach their children Negro history, Negro pride and self-respect in their homes to counteract the elementary and high school education they get that holds up the superiority of the white race.

When it is considered that we can only achieve success through harmony and unity, then it can be realized how much one has to sacrifice as a leader for getting that harmony that is necessary to bring about the results that are desired.

Let the world know that 400,000,000 Negroes are prepared to die or live as free men. Despise us as much as you care. Ignore us as much as you care. We are coming 400,000,000 strong.

We feel sure by our own energy and effort the day will come when everyone will feel proud to be an African citizen, and the advantage that others take of us today will be made impossible because of our ability then to protect ourselves.

We have been camouflaged into believing that we were made free by Abraham Lincoln. That we were made free by Victoria of England. But up to now we are still slaves. We are industrial slaves. We are social slaves. We are political slaves.

Turn ye around and make a conquest of everything North and South, East and West. And then we you have wrought well, you will have merited God’s blessing, you will become God’s chosen people and naturally you’ll become leaders of the world.

A race that is solely dependent upon another for its economic existence sooner or later dies.

All peoples are struggling to blast a way through the industrial monopoly of races and nations, but the Negro as a whole has failed to grasp its true significance and seems to delight in filling only that place created for him by the white man.

All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishment of an African Empire - so strong and powerful, as to compel the respect of mankind, but we in our life-time can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility within another generation.

Life is that existence that is given to man to live for a purpose, to live to his own satisfaction and pleasure, providing he forgets not the God who created him and who expects a spiritual obedience and observation of the moral laws that He inspired.

The world ought to know that it could not keep 400,000,000 Negroes down forever.

The Negro, to be employed and to be his own employer, must have his independent farms, stores, factories and mills. But he must start them as the white man did, growing from a single room of industry into the mighty factory on the hillside of the plain.

Men, there is much to live for, and there is much to die for. The man, the race or nation that is not prepared to risk life itself for the possession of an ideal, shall lose that ideal. If you, I repeat, must be free, you yourselves must strike the blow.

This should be the policy of every Negro; to live for something to hand down to a son, or a grandson so that they may have life a little easier than their fathers before them. This is the way successful and great families have come into the world and great races too.

One must never stop reading. Read everything that you can read that is of standard knowledge. Don't waste time reading trashy literature.

Propaganda has done more to defeat the good intentions of races and nations than even open warfare... We of the Negro race are suffering more than any other race in the world from propaganda... propaganda to destroy our hopes, our ambitions and our confidence in self.

God acts indifferently and His plan and purpose is generally worked out through the agency of human action. In His directed, inspired prophecy, He promised that Ethiopia's day would come, not by the world changing towards us, but by our stretching out our hands unto Him.

We, as a people, ought to feel glad that there is in existence such a movement like the Universal Negro Improvement Association, to afford us the opportunity of legislating for our own common good rather than allowing us to depend upon the good will of others to do for us.

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

Never divide or create confusion between the different colors in the Negro race. Always try to prove that the standard Negro is the African and that all Negroes should be proud of their Black blood, without insulting any color within the race. This is very, very important.

Have your own newspapers, your own artists, your own sculptors, your own pulpits, your own platforms, print your own books and show your own motion pictures and sculpture your own subjects. Never accept as yours subjects of another race; but glorify all the good in yourselves.

Never be satisfied to always live under the government of other people because you will always be at their mercy. Visualize for yourself and your children and generations unborn, your own king, emperor, president, your own government officials and administrators, who look like you.

I trust that you will so live today as to realize that you are masters of your own destiny, masters of your fate; if there is anything you want in this world, it is for you to strike out with confidence and faith in self and reach for it.

Never hang around people who are always discouraged, despondent, poverty stricken, poor and never-do-well. You will ultimately become like them. Try to get around cheery people, happy people, prosperous people, and you will unconsciously take on their prosperity and their happiness.

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.

Look for me in a whirlwind or a storm! Look for me all around you! For with God's grace, I shall come back with countless millions of Black men and women who have died in America, those who have died in the West Indies, and those who have died in Africa, to aid you in the fight for liberty, freedom and life!

Point me to a weak nation and I will show you a people oppressed, abused, taken advantage of by others. Show me a weak race and I will show you a people reduced to serfdom, peonage and slavery. Show me a well organized nation, and I will show you a people and a nation respected by the world.

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. Any attempt at disarmament when half the world oppresses the other half is but a farce, because the oppressed will make their oppressors get armed sooner or later.

Lift up yourselves, men, take yourselves out of the mire and hitch your hopes to the stars; yes, rise as high as the very stars themselves. Let no man pull you down, let no man destroy your ambition, because man is but your companion, your equal; man is your brother; he is not your lord; he is not your sovereign master.

Whenever a member of your race is down; pick him up. Whenever he wants genuine help and you can help him; do so. Never leave him stranded and friendless. If you cannot help him yourself, send him to someone of the race who can help him. Put an arm of protection around him and keep him from going wrong and feeling absolutely friendless.

Great stress must be laid on the fact that for the Negro to realize the objective of a nation and government of his own, he must first have financial security.

Every student of political science, every student of political economy, every student of economics knows that the race can only be saved through a solid industrial foundation; that the race can only be saved through political independence. Take away industry from a race, take away political freedom from a race and you have a slave race.

Never be unkind to your race. Never curse your race. If anything is being done that is wrong by a member of your race, try to put him right. Don't condemn him without hearing him. Give him a chance to do what is right, before you denounce him. If he provokes you, try to put up with his ignorance and persuade him to be kind, good and gentle.

The Negro must have an educational system of his own; based upon the history and tradition of his race. Therefore, the textbooks must be different than the white man's textbooks. The white man's books laud him and outrage the Negro. In such textbooks the Negro should substitute all that is bad affecting him for what is good relating to him.

There is no economic security for the race when it has to always depend on the white man's employment.

Black men, Colored men, Negroes have as much right to be free as any other race that God Almighty ever created, and we desire freedom that is unfettered, freedom that is unlimited, freedom that will give us a chance and opportunity to rise to the fullest of our ambition, and that we cannot get in countries where other men rule and dominate.

Don’t allow the other nations to get ahead of you in anything. Follow the idea of the Japanese. Every ship the other races build the Japanese build one. Every university the other races build for teaching men, the Japanese build one. Do the same. Always have your own because there will not be enough to accommodate you later on. Create your own.

The Negro should not be satisfied with a college or university education from white schools. He should add to his schooling by going to his own schools and universities, where possible, or read such textbooks that have been adopted by his schools and colleges. These books should glorify the Negro; just as the white man's system glorifies the white man.

"Have you ever stopped to think of the thousands of dollars spent daily by colored people in a community like Harlem, or any other community with a large colored population? How much of this money gets back into your pockets in one way or another? Not much, oh? How do you account for that? Easy enough when you stop to think that there are not enough businesses controlled and operated by colored people in proportion to their numbers in any given community.

If fifty percent of the money spent by us daily for commodities of every kind were spent among ourselves, do you realize the tremendous advantage the race would have?"

The Negro peoples of the world should concentrate upon the object of building up for themselves a great nation in Africa... creating for ourselves a political superstate... a government, a nation of our own, strong enough to lend protection to the members of our race scattered all over the world, and to compel the respect of the nations and races of the earth.

Before we can properly help the people, we have to destroy the old education... that teaches them that somebody is keeping them back and that God has forgotten them and that they can't rise because of their color... we can only build... with faith in ourselves and with self-reliance, believing in our own possibilities, that we can rise to the highest in God's creation.

If you want liberty, you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free, you must become so through your own effort, through your own initiative. Those who have discouraged you in the past are those who have enslaved you for centuries and it is not expected that they will admit that you have a right to strike out at this late hour for freedom, liberty and democracy.

Every Japanese you see is working for the good of his nation. Every white man you see is working for the good of his nation. Teach every Black man to work for the good of his nation.

The Negro must start from the ground floor of commerce and industry and climb up. When he can make a good handkerchief, then later he will make a gross, and then a million gross with his factory going at top speed. When he can make a single tie successfully, then he will make his gross, then hundreds of gross, then thousands of gross [and] his factory will hum and buzz with activity.

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.

We are determined to unite the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world for the purpose of building a civilization of their own. And in that effort we desire to bring together the 15,000,000 of the United States, the 180,000,000 in Asia, the West Indies and Central and South America, and the 200,000,000 in Africa. We are looking toward political freedom on the continent of Africa, the land of our fathers.

The American Negro should look forward to manufacture for other Negroes the things that they consume and need. He should look forward to purchase from those Negroes in foreign parts their raw materials, so that they will be able to turn out the products that are needed by the world's millions.

There is much for us to do. In taking the raw materials from our people in Africa to America, as well as materials from the West Indies, South and Central America to the United States, and taking back to them our finished and manufactured products in exchange, we have a whole world of industrial conquest to make and it can be done splendidly if each Negro will give us the support that is necessary.

The fault with the Negro in business, commercial or industrial, has been his inability to appreciate starting at a given point and climbing steadily, while other races have been willing to start from the bottom and climb up. The Negroes have always desired to start from the top, therefore, he comes down. No success ever came from the top, it is always from the bottom up. The Negro must learn to climb from the bottom up.

Some of us seem to accept the fatalist position, the fatalist attitude, that God accorded to us a certain position and condition, and therefore there is no need trying to be otherwise. The moment you accept such an attitude, the moment you accept such an opinion, the moment you harbor such an idea, you hurl an insult at the great God who created you, because you question Him for His love, you question Him for His mercy.

If 400,000,000 Negroes can only get to know themselves, to know that in them is a sovereign power, is an authority that is absolute, then in the next twenty-four hours we would have a new race, we would have a nation, an empire, resurrected, not from the will of others to see us rise, but from our own determination to rise, irrespective of what the world thinks.

We are men; we have souls, we have passions, we have feelings, we have hopes, we have desires, like any other race in the world. The cry is raised all over the world today of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the Americans, of England for the English, of France for the French, of Germany for the Germans - do you think it is unreasonable that we, the Blacks of the world, should raise the cry of Africa for the Africans?

It is the same God who inspired the Psalmist to write, 'Princes shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God.' At this moment, methinks I see Ethiopia stretching forth her hands unto God, and methinks I see the Angel of God taking up the standard of the Red, the Black and the Green, and saying 'Men of the Negro Race, Men of Ethiopia, follow me.'' Tonight we are following. We are following 400,000,000 strong.

No fear, no intimidation, nothing can daunt the courage of the Negro who affiliates himself with the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The Universal Negro Improvement Association is light, and we have entered into light and shall not go back into darkness. We have entered into the light of a new day; we have seen the light of a new creation; we have seen the light of a new civilization, and we shall follow where that light leads.

I had a motive and a purpose; it was not the money, because I could have gotten that for myself and been satisfied; it was not position, because I could have got that for myself. What was it? It was the crying voice from the grave that said, 'Garvey, we have suffered for 250 years for your day and for your time; we expect something from you at this hour.'

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