Happy birthday, Amiri Baraka! Here are some quote from the writer.

“There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.”

“A man is either free, or he is not. There cannot be an apprenticeship for freedom.”

“There is no depth to education without art.”

“If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist.”

“The attempt to divide art and politics is Bourgeois philosophy which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is, by the nature of society, political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.”

“God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.”

“Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.”

“Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.”