Remembering Black nationalist Marcus Garvey: 10 Quotes

Today we celebrate the birth of Marcus Garvey, a proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, inspiring the Nation of Islam and the Rastafarian movement.

Born in Jamaica on this day, Garvey was an orator for the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements and advanced a Pan-African philosophy, which inspired a global mass movement, known as Garveyism. Garveyism would eventually inspire others, from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement.

We share 10 favourite quotes from him.

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

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

3. 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.

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

5. A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.

Read: 10 Quotes by Wole Soyinka

6. 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.

7. 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.

21 July 2016. Bust of Marcus Garvey. Photo: Alan Stanton/Flickr

8. We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is our only ruler; sovereign.

9. Having had the wrong education as a start in his racial career, the Negro has become his own greatest enemy. Most of the trouble I have had in advancing the cause of the race has come from Negroes. Booker Washington aptly described the race in one of his lectures by stating that 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. Yet, those of us with vision cannot desert the race, leaving it to suffer and die.

10. 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.