John Henrik Clarke Quotes & Sayings

“A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson.”

“A people's relationship to their heritage is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother.”

“History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be.”

“Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.”

“To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.”

“What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.”

“We have been educated into believing someone else's concept of the deity, and someone else's standard of beauty. You have the right to practice any religion and politics in a way that best suits your freedom, your dignity, and your understanding. And once you do that, you don't apologize.”

“Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the hand maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds.”

“Egypt gave birth to what later would become known as 'Western Civilization,' long before the greatness of Greece and Rome.”

“Africa and its people are the most written about and the least understood of all of the world's people. This condition started in the 15th and the 16th centuries with the beginning of the slave trade system. The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people.”