Skip to content

We say, “If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.” We must precisely state that what we repeat is not history but our errors under ever-changing material conditions. History does not repeat itself; it cannot. Nothing can. The first law of the universe is everything changes, all the time. Only those who see history as events and not as a process can make this error.

— Stokely Carmichael Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: p. 189
Work: Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, 1967
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Stokely Carmichael

One of the strategies of racism is to confuse the victims into believing all their victories should be awarded to the oppressor.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

The universal law of human nature: Where there is oppression there is resistance, and “where oppression grows, resistance grows.”

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

The task of imperialism is to divide and rule, isolate and dominate.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

Capitalism does not lie some of the time, it lies all of the time.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

Revolutionaries do not take to the path of spilling blood easily.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

Those of us who survive must indeed be a tough people.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

There can be no social order without social justice.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

What the master giveth, the master can take away.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

All Stokely Carmichael quotes →

Topics

History

More quotes by Stokely Carmichael

“The law” became a convenient tool to be used by illegal masters when black people sought to move.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

The capitalist press simply records history, it never makes it; only the masses make history!

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

The social effects of colonialism are to degrade and to dehumanize the subjected black man.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

The U.S.A. is a settler-colony; only the indigenous people are its just owners.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

The time is long overdue for the black community to redefine itself, set forth new values and goals, and organize around them.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

All Stokely Carmichael quotes →

You may also like

A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

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