Marcus Garvey’s Quotes on Self-Development and Self Reliance
1. 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.
2. Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. What you do today that is worthwhile, inspires others to act at some future time.
7. There is nothing in the world common to man, that man cannot do.
8. 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 and let history record that as we toiled laboriously and courageously, we worked to live gloriously.
9. Take advantage of every opportunity; where there is none, make it for yourself.
10. Up, you mighty race, accomplish what you will.
11. To be once defeated is to find cause for an everlasting struggle to reach the top.
12. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.
13. Lose not courage, lose not faith, go forward.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. To be ambitious is to be great in mind and soul. To want that which is worthwhile and strive for it. To go on without looking back, reaching to that which gives satisfaction.
17. Let us not try to be the best or the worst of others, but let us make the effort to be the best of ourselves.
18. If we as a people realized the greatness from which we came we would be less likely to disrespect ourselves.
19. Mind creates and as much as we desire in nature we can have through the creation of our own minds.
20. Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.
21. The greatest possession of man is character.
22. There is no humanity before that which starts with yourself.
Garveys’s Quotes On Race, Libration, and Activism
23. Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is at hand!
24. Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.
25. There shall be no solution to this race problem until you, yourselves, strike the blow for liberty.
26. Be as proud of your race today as our fathers were in the days of yore. We have beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.
27. Now is the chance for every Negro to make every effort toward a commercial, industrial standard that will make us comparable with the successful businessmen of other races.
28. Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.
29. The whole world is run on bluff.
30. 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.
31. The black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. Let no voice but your own speak to you from the depths. Let no influence but your own raise you in time of peace and time of war. Hear all, but attend only that which concerns you.
35. The race needs workers at this time, not plagiarists, sopists and mere imitators; but men and women who are able to create, to originate, and improve, and thus make an independent racial contribution to the world and civilization.
36. We were like crabs in a barrel, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt all would continue to pull back into the barrel the one crab that would make the effort to climb out.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. Black men, you were once great; you shall be great again. Lose not courage or faith, go forward.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. Be Black, buy Black, think Black, and all else will take care of itself.
43. The race can only be saved through a solid industrial foundation.
44. Rise up Black Men, and take your stand. Reach up black men and women and pull all nature’s knowledge to you.
45. The history of a movement, the history of a nation, the history of a race is the guidepost of that movement’s destiny, that nation’s destiny, that race’s destiny.
46. A race that is solely dependent upon another for its economic existence sooner or later dies.
47. I read “Up From Slavery” and then my dream – if I may so call it – of being a race leader dawned.
48. …Beauty, virtue, and goodness are the exclusive attributes of no one race. All humanity have their shortcomings, hence no statement of mine, must be interpreted as a wholesale praise of, or attack upon any race, people or creed.
Quotes on Education and Success
49. 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.
50. 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.
51. 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.
52. 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.
53. Having had the wrong education as a start in his racial career, the Negro has become his own greatest enemy.
54. A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.
55. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.
56. If you get up every day and you don’t learn you are
a fool.
57. Lift up yourselves, men, take yourselves out of the mire and hitch your hopes to 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 your sovereign master.
58. 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.
59. 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.
60. Never Forget Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.
61. Progress is the attraction that moves humanity.
62. A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.
63. 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.
64. 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.
65. The pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together.
66. To see your enemy and know him is a part of the complete education of man.
67. A man’s bread and butter is only insured when he works for it.
68. Do not remove the kinks from your hair – remove them from your brain.
69. The thing to do is to get organized; keep separated and you will be exploited, you will and you will compel the world to respect you.
Quotes on Peace and Injustice
70. The protection against injustice in man is power – physical, financial, and scientific.
71. Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.
72. There can be no peace among men and nations, so long as the strong continues to oppress the weak, so long as injustice is done to other peoples, just so long we will have cause for war, and make a lasting peace an impossibility.
73. Government is not infallible…The government must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people.
74. Hungry men have no respect for law, authority, or human life.
75. I like honesty and fair play.
76. 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.
78. The only protection against INJUSTICE in man is POWER? Physical, financial, and scientific.
79. This hour we are stretching forth our hands with the desire to teach the world the true principles of mercy and justice.
80. 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.
81. That we suffer so much today under whatsoever flag we live in is proof positive that constitutions and laws, when framed by the early advocates of human liberty, never included and were never intended for us as a people. It is only a question of sheer accident that we happen to be fellow citizens today with the descendants of those who, through their advocacy, laid the foundation for human rights.
See Also: 50 Most Powerful Nelson Mandela Quotes
Good Leadership and Nationalism
82. Government is only an executive control, a centralized authority for the purpose of expressing the will of the people; before you have a government you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government.
83. When all else fails to organize the people, conditions will.
84. God does not give people positions or jobs or good conditions such as they desire; they must do that for themselves. God does not build cities nor towns nor nations, nor homes, nor factories; men and people do that and all those who want must work for themselves and pray to God to give them strength to do it.
85. Unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their own.
86. We are not engaged in domestic politics, in church building, or in social uplift work, but we are engaged in nation-building.
88. 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.
89. You at this time can only be destroyed by yourselves, from within and not from without. You have reached the point where the victory is to be won from within and can only be lost from within.
90. History is the landmark by which we are directed into the true course of life.
91. 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.
Quotations From Marcus Garvey on Other Spheres of Life
92. She makes one happy, then miserable. You are to her kind, then unkind. Constant yet inconstantnt. Thus we have Woman. No real man can do without her.
93. 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.
94. 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.
95. Look for me in the whirl 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 West Indies, and the millions in Africa to you in the fight for liberty, freedom, and life.
96. Religion is one’s opinion and belief in some ethical truth. To be Christian is to have the religion of Christ, and so to be a believer of Mohammed is to be a Mohammedan but there are so many religions that every man seems to be a religion unto himself.
97. 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.
98. 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.
99. The power that holds Africa is human, and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done, man can do.
100. Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.
