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Marcus Garvey Quotes

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr., ONH , was a proponent of Black nationalism in Jamaica and especially the United States. He was a leader of a mass movement called Pan-Africanism and he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League . He also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Although most American Black leaders condemned his methods and his support for racial segregation, Garvey attracted a large following. The Black Star Line went bankrupt and Garvey was imprisoned for mail fraud in the selling of its stock. His movement then rapidly collapsed.

Prior to the 20th century, leaders such as Prince Hall, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Henry Highland Garnet advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement and economic empowerment focusing on Africa known as Garveyism. Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement

Garveyism intended persons of African ancestry in the diaspora to "redeem" the nations of Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave the continent. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in Negro World entitled "African Fundamentalism", where he wrote: "Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country…"

✵ 17. August 1887 – 10. June 1940
Marcus Garvey photo
Marcus Garvey: 18   quotes 21   likes

Famous Marcus Garvey Quotes

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

Source: Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

“A Race without the knowledge of its history is like a tree without roots.”

Marcus Garvey

Though often attributed to Garvey, this statement first appears in Charles Siefert's 1938 pamphlet, The Negro's or Ethiopian's Contribution to Art.
Misattributed

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

1937 interview reported by Joel A. Rogers, "Marcus Garvey," in Negroes of New York series, New York Writers Program, 1939, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey Quotes about men

“When the war started in Abyssinia all Negro nationalists looked with hope to Haile Selassie. They spoke for him, they prayed for him, they sung for him, they did everything to hold up his hands, as Aaron did for Moses; but whilst the Negro peoples of the world were praying for the success of Abyssinia this little Emperor was undermining the fabric of his own kingdom by playing the fool with white men, having them advising him[, ] having them telling him what to do, how to surrender, how to call off the successful thrusts of his [Race] against the Italian invaders. Yes, they were telling him how to prepare his flight, and like an imbecilic child he followed every advice and then ultimately ran away from his country to England, leaving his people to be massacred by the Italians, and leaving the serious white world to laugh at every Negro and repeat the charge and snare - "he is incompetent," "we told you so." Indeed Haile Selassie has proved the incompetence of the Negro for political authority, but thank God there are Negroes who realise that Haile Selassie did not represent the truest qualities of the Negro race. How could he, when he wanted to play white? How could he, when he surrounded himself with white influence? How could he, when in a modern world, and in a progressive civilization, he preferred a slave State of black men than a free democratic country where the black citizens could rise to the same opportunities as white citizens in their democracies?”

Marcus Garvey

The Failure of Haile Selassie as Emperor in The Blackman, April, 1937.

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

Marcus Garvey

Reported in Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans, and Andrew Frothingham, And I Quote: The Definitive Collection of Quotes, Sayings, and Jokes for the Contemporary Speechmaker (St. Martin's Press, 2003), p. 84. ISBN 0312307446.

Marcus Garvey Quotes

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

“If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you have started.”

Marcus Garvey

Philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey: or, Africa for the Africans‎ (Routledge, 1967), P. 10. ISBN 0714611433.

Life , Confidence

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

“great principles, great ideals know no nationality.”

Marcus Garvey

Source: Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

“to be once defeated is to find cause for an everlasting struggle to reach the top.”

Marcus Garvey

Source: Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

First Message to the Negroes of the World from Atlanta Prison" http://www.unia-acl.org/archive/whrlwind.htm (10 February 1925).

Life , God , Freedom , Fight

“Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… let us hold together under all climes and in every country…”

Marcus Garvey

The philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans (Majority Press, 1986 ed.), p. 163. ISBN 0912469242.

Country

“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.”

Marcus Garvey

"The Failure of Haile Selassie as Emperor" The Blackman, April, 1937.

War , History , Country

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