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I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word "empire"; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised.

— Benjamin Zephaniah

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Slavery

More quotes by Benjamin Zephaniah

Someone said that Capitalism will eat itself, and I think that’s like the meat industry, the meat industry itself will become dead meat and compassion will reign supreme.

I have always loved playing around with words. I didn’t know it was called poetry. I was just an innocent kid messing around with words when an adult said ‘You’re a poet, be published or be damned’.

There's no vegan who is the greatest
Because all you vegans are great,
Just like the peace dove
You symbolise love,
And there is no death on your plate.

The Little Book Of Vegan Poems (2001)

If the young vegan kids of our nation
Are at school and can't get vegan bites,
Then the school staff need food education
Because safe food are one of our rights.

The Little Book Of Vegan Poems (2001)

When I start, I have a story that tends to have a lesson to be learnt. A lot of the time my novels are called novels for young adults and I think one of the reasons they are popular with young adults is because they read them and understand it…

All Benjamin Zephaniah quotes →

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

Abraham Lincoln

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Abraham Lincoln

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Benjamin Zephaniah (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.