Top 90 Marcus Garvey Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The value of knowledge is to use it. It is not humanly possible that a person can retain all knowledge of the world, but if a person knows how to search for all the knowledge of the world, he will find it when he wants it.”

— Marcus Garvey

52. “God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.”

— Marcus Garvey

53. “Black men of Carthage, Ethiopia, of Timbuktu and Alexandria gave the likes of civilization to this world.”

— Marcus Garvey

54. “The greatest possesion of man is character.”

— Marcus Garvey

55. “Present day statesmen are making the biggest blunder of the age if they believe that there can be any peace without equity and justice to all mankind.”

— Marcus Garvey

56. “Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and so long as a race or people expose themselves to the danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be reduced to slavery.”

— Marcus Garvey

57. “A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.”

— Marcus Garvey

58. “A man’s bread and butter is only insured when he works for it.”

— Marcus Garvey

59. “The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.”

— Marcus Garvey

60. “Every man has a right to his own opinion. Every race has a right to its own action; therefore let no man persuade you against your will, let no other race influence you against your own.”

— Marcus Garvey

61. “Always try to associate with people from whom you can learn something. All the knowledge that you want is in the world, and all you have to do is go and seek it.”

— Marcus Garvey

62. “She makes one happy, then miserable. You are to her kind, then unkind. Constant yet inconstant. Thus we have WOMAN. No real man can do without her.”

— Marcus Garvey

63. “Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.”

— Marcus Garvey

64. “If I die in Atlanta my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa’s glory.”

— Marcus Garvey

65. “I pray God that we shall never use our physical prowess to oppress the human race, but we will use our strength, physically, morally and otherwise to preserve humanity and civilization.”

— Marcus Garvey

66. “Unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their own.”

— Marcus Garvey

67. “God Almighty created each and every one of use for a place in the world, and for the least of us to think that we were created only to be what we are and not what we can make ourselves, is to impute an improper motive to the Creator for creating is.”

— Marcus Garvey

68. “We are not engaged in domestic politics, in church building or in social uplift work, but we are engaged in nation building.”

— Marcus Garvey

69. “Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa.”

— Marcus Garvey

70. “There shall be no solution to this race problem until you, yourselves, strike the blow for liberty.”

— Marcus Garvey

71. “History is the land-mark by which we are directed into the true course of life.”

— Marcus Garvey

72. “I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite object of helping the people, especially those of my race, to know, to understand, and to realize themselves.”

— Marcus Garvey

73. “The power that holds Africa is human, and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done, man can do.”

— Marcus Garvey

74. “It is only the belief and the confidence we have in a God why man is able to understand his own social institutions, and move and live like a rational human being.”

— Marcus Garvey

75. “I read “Up From Slavery” and then my dream – if I may so call it – of being a race leader dawned.”

— Marcus Garvey

76. “The history of a movement, the history of a nation, the history of a race is the guide-post of that movement’s destiny, that nation’s destiny, that race’s destiny.”

— Marcus Garvey

77. “There is no humanity before that which starts with yourself.”

— Marcus Garvey

78. “A people without the knowledge of...”

— Marcus Garvey

79. “American suffragist, speech “Is Woman Suffrage Progressing?” at Stockholm, Sweden Radicalism is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom.”

— Marcus Garvey

80. “Climb ye the heights of liberty and cease not in well doing until you have planted the banner of the Red, the Black and the Green on the hilltops of Africa.”

— Marcus Garvey

81. “Pay no attention to the man who criticizes unless he is doing something better than what he criticizes.”

— Marcus Garvey

82. “Prohibition is to abstain from intoxicating liquor, as it makes us morbid and sometimes drunk. But we get drunk every day, nevertheless, not so much by the strength of what we sip from the cup, but that which we eat, the water we drink, and the air we inhale, which at fermentation conspire at eventide to make us so drunk and tired that we lose control of ourselves and fall asleep. Everybody is a drunkard, and if we were to enforce real prohibition we should all be dead.”

— Marcus Garvey

83. “Let no voice but your own speak to you from the depths. Let no influence but your own raise you in time of peace and time of war. Hear all, but attend only that which concerns you.”

— Marcus Garvey

84. “You at this time can only be destroyed by yourselves, from within and not from without. You have reached the point where the victory is to be won from within and can only be lost from within.”

— Marcus Garvey

85. “Every student of political science, every student of political economy, every student of economics knows that the race can only be saved through a solid industrial foundation; that the race can only be saved through political independence. Take away industry from a race, take away political freedom from a race and you have a slave race.”

— Marcus Garvey

86. “Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.”

— Marcus Garvey

87. “Ideals of liberty, freedom and righteousness do not prosper in the 20th century excepts they coincide with oil, rubber, gold, diamond, coal, iron, sugar, coffee, and such other minerals and products desired by the privileged, capitalists and leaders who control the system of government.”

— Marcus Garvey

88. “Some of us seem to accept the fatalist position, the fatalist attitude, that God accorded to us a certain position and condition, and therefore there is no need trying to be otherwise. The moment you accept such an attitude, the moment you accept such an opinion, the moment you harbor such an idea, you hurl an insult at the great God who created you, because you question Him for His love, you question Him for His mercy.”

— Marcus Garvey

89. “Men, there is much to live for, and there is much to die for. The man, the race of nation that is not prepared to risk life itself for the possession of an ideal, shall lose that ideal. If you, I repeat, must be free, you yourselves must strike the blow.”

— Marcus Garvey

90. “There is no strength but that which is destructive, because man has lost his virtues, and only respects force, which he himself cannot counteract.”

— Marcus Garvey

91. “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is our only ruler; sovereign.”

— Marcus Garvey

92. “The race needs workers at this time, not plagiarists, sopists and mere imitators; but men and women who are able to create, to originate and improve, and thus make an independent racial contribution to the world and civilisation.”

— Marcus Garvey

93. “The world today is indebted to us for the benefits of civilization. They stole our arts and sciences from Africa. Then why should we be ashamed of ourselves?”

— Marcus Garvey

94. “Who to tell what tomorrow will bring forth? Did they not laugh at Moses, Christ and Mohammed? Was there not a Carthage, Greece and Rome? We see and have changes every day, so pray, work, be steadfast and be not dismayed.”

— Marcus Garvey

95. “Hail! United States of Africa-free! Country of the brave black man’s liberty; State of greater nationhood thou hast won, A new life for the race is just begun.”

— Marcus Garvey