Soledad Brother Quotes

“I've been patient, but where I'm concerned patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“It's very contradictory for a man to teach about the murder in corporate capitalism, to isolate and expose the murderers behind it, to instruct that these madmen are completely without stops, are licentious, totally depraved — and then not make adequate preparations to defend himself from the madman's attack. Either they don't really believe their own spiel or they harbor some sort of subconscious death wish.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“When a nation can’t admit to the process through which it builds hegemony, how can anything but delusion be a reality?”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Western culture developed out of a very hostile environment. Rocks, snow, ice, long periods when the ground was too hard to be worked, when nothing could be produced from the soil, hunting became too important; accumulating, hoarding, hiding, protecting enough to last through the winter, things falling apart in winter, covetous glances at one’s neighbor’s goods. Would three or four thousand years of that kind of survival influence a culture? Would greed color itself into the total result, in a large way? Hunt, forage, store, hoard, hide, defend, the thing at stake!! Not very conducive to sensitivity, tenderness.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“We don’t want to capitalize on people anyway. Capitalism is the enemy. It must be destroyed. There is no other recourse”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Neoslavery is an economic condition, a small knot of men exercising the property rights of their established economic order, organizing and controlling the life style of the slave as if he were in fact property. Succinctly: an economic condition which manifests itself in the total loss or absence of self-determination.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“If you don’t make any more in wages than you need to live, you are a neoslave. You qualify if you cannot afford to leave California for New York. If you cannot visit Zanzibar, Havana, Peking, or even Paris when you get the urge, you are a slave. If you’re held in one spot on this earth because of your economic status, it is just the same as being held in one spot because you are the owner’s property.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Pigs come here to feed on the garbage heap for two reasons really, the first half because they can do no other work, frustrated men soon to develop sadistic mannerisms; and the second half, sadists out front, suffering under the restraints placed upon them by an equally sadistic-vindictive society. The sadist knows that to practice his religion upon the society at large will bring down upon his head their sadistic reaction. Killing is great fun, but not at the risk of getting killed (note how they squeak and pull out their hair over losing even one). But the restraints come off when they walk through the compound gates. Their whole posture goes through a total metamorphosis. Inflict pain, satisfy the power complex, and get a check. How can the sick administer to the sick. In the well-ordered society prisons would not exist as such. If a man is ill he should be placed in a hospital, staffed by the very best of technicians. Men would never be separated from women. These places would be surfeited with equipment and meaningful programs, even if it meant diverting funds from another, or even from all other sectors of the economy. It’s socially self-destructive to create a monster and loose him upon the world.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“My life means absolutely nothing without positive control over the factors that determine its quality.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Strength is being able to control yourself and your total environment—yourself first, however.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I could go on all week about how your tax money is being used, but let it suffice for me to say it is not being used to help you or yours. You are getting no return on your investment. This is what taxes are supposed to be all about, an investment in the community, the society, a pooling of each individual’s resources so that the administration can be financed, so that the administration can perform the jobs which must be done to ensure public welfare, and the jobs which no individual can do well alone. Now it follows that if everyone pays, everyone should get proper returns. The streetlights should be the same in Watts and Bel Air. It seems that some dereliction of duty has indeed taken place. George”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I didn’t create this impasse. I had nothing to do with the arrival of matters at this destructive end, as you infer. Did I colonize, kidnap, make war on myself, destroy my own institutions, enslave myself, use myself, and neglect myself, steal my identity and then, being reduced to nothing, invent a competitive economy knowing that I cannot compete”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Right here at this juncture of time we as a people have nothing, absolutely nothing but each other, some fresh air, the blue and gold of day and silver at night, a clean conscience, and the promise of cloudless days to come. But”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“can still smile sometimes, but by the time this thing is over I may not be a nice person. And I just lit my seventy-seventh cigarette of this 21-hour day. I’m going to lay down for two or three hours, perhaps I’ll sleep … Seize the Time.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“in every instance they are sent out of the prison more damaged physically and mentally than when they entered. Because that is the reality. Do you continue to investigate the inmate? Where does administrative responsibility begin? Perhaps the administration of the prison cannot be held accountable for every individual act of their charges, but when things fly apart along racial lines, when the breakdown can be traced so clearly to circumstances even beyond the control of the guards and administration, investigation of anything outside the tenets of the fascist system itself is futile.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“The apologists recognize that these places are controlled by absolute terror, but they justify the pig’s excesses with the argument that we exist outside the practice of any civilized codes of conduct. Since we are convicts rather than men, a bullet through the heat, summary execution for fistfighting or stepping across a line is not extreme or unsound at all. An official is allowed full range in violent means because a convict can be handled no other way.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“She was saying that I should be indifferent about being used and abused like a goat or milk cow or something. I understand her and all black women over here. Women like to be dominated, love being strong-armed, need an overseer to supplement their weakness. So how could she really understand my feelings on self-determination. For this reason we should never allow women to express any opinions on the subject, but just to sit, listen to us, and attempt to understand. It is for them to obey and aid us, not to attempt to think.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“As Daniel Singer asked at the Evergreen conference in 1987, “Is it possible for a class which exterminates the native peoples of the Americas, replaces them by raping Africa for humans it then denigrates and dehumanizes as slaves, while cheapening and degrading its own working class—is it possible for such a class to create a democracy, equality and to advance the cause of human freedom? The implicit answer is, ‘No, of course not.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“The Yankee dog that proposes to me that I should join him in containing the freedom of a Vietnamese or a Chinese brother of the revolution is going to get spat on. I don’t care how much he has to offer in the way of short-term material benefits. We must establish a true internationalism with other anticolonial peoples. Then we will be on the road of the true revolutionary. Only then can we expect to be able to seize the power that is rightfully ours, the power to control the circumstances of our day-to-day lives.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“The pig is an instrument of neoslavery, to be hated and avoided; he is pushed to the front by the men who exercise the unnatural right over property. You’ve heard the patronizing shit about the thin blue line that protects property and the owners of property. The pigs are not protecting you, your home, and its contents. Recall they never found the TV set you lost in that burglary. They’re protecting the unnatural right of a few men to own the means of all of our subsistence. The pig is protecting the right of a few private individuals to own public property!! The pig is merely the gun, the tool, a mentally inanimate utensil. It is necessary to destroy the gun, but destroying the gun and sparing the hand that holds it will forever relegate us to a defensive action, hold our revolution in the doldrums, ultimately defeat us. The animal that holds the gun, that has loosed the pig of war on us, is a bitter-ender, an intractable, gluttonous vulture who must eat at our hearts to live. Midas-motivated, never satisfied, everything he touches will turn into shit! Slaying the shitty pig will have absolutely no healing effect at all, if we leave this vulture to touch someone else. Spare the hand that holds the gun and it will simply fashion another.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Always they will promote competition (while they cooperate), division, mistrust, a sense of isolation. The antipodes of love. The M.O. of the fascist arrangement is always to protect the capitalist class by destroying the consciousness, the trust, the unity of the lower classes.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“It is just as a leader of black thought that I disagreed with him. The concept of nonviolence is a false ideal. It presupposes the existence of compassion and a sense of justice on the part of one’s adversary. When this adversary has everything to lose and nothing to gain by exercising justice and compassion, his reaction can only be negative.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I refuse to let myself be punished with stuff like this. Locked in jail, within a jail, my mind is still free. I refuse ever to allow myself to be forced by living conditions into a response that is not commensurate with intelligence and my final objective.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Perhaps if I could forget, I could have some peace of mind. But I don’t forget anything, wounds scar my mind much worse than they scar my body.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Perhaps it’s my fault. I push people away by expecting too much of them. I probably used the wrong presentation with her and frightened her. Or she may not care to hear about clean living and high ideals.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“As a woman I can understand your being naturally disposed to servitude.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“I understand her and all black women over here. Women like to be dominated, love being strong-armed, need an overseer to supplement their weakness. So how could she really understand my feelings on self-determination. For this reason we should never allow women to express any opinions on the subject, but just to sit, listen to us, and attempt to understand. It is for them to obey and aid us, not to attempt to think.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“This is the height of disrespect you show me. You never wanted me to be a man nor Jon either. You don’t want us to resist and defeat our enemies. What is wrong with you, Mama? No other mama in history has acted the way you act under stress situations.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Being a woman, you may expect to be and enjoy being tyrannized. Perhaps you actually like walking at the heel of another, or otherwise placing yourself beneath another, but for me this is despicable.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“That which you didn’t do I never expected, for you are after all a woman and think as a woman should.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson