Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt. – Eldridge Cleaver
The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books. – Eldridge Cleaver
In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all. – Eldridge Cleaver
Respect commands itself and can neither be given nor withheld when it is due. – Eldridge Cleaver
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field. – James Baldwin