The Right Excellent Marcus

Mosiah Garvey
1887-1940
Quotes by and about Marcus
Mosiah Garvey
“History is the land-mark by which we are
directed into the course of life. 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.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey

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Janelle Young , Research Unit ,
JCDC , 2014
“ Garvey had enjoined the Negroes of his
time to know themselves, to become
aware of the great potential of their
blackness and to enjoy the pride that flows
from this awareness. His Philosophy and
Opinions” is full of such injunctions.”
-Professor Rex Nettleford
Former Vice-Chancellor, UWI

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Janelle Young , Research Unit ,
JCDC , 2014
“What you do today that is worthwhile inspires
others to act at some future time.”

-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey

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Janelle Young , Research Unit ,
JCDC , 2014
“Marcus Garvey was the first man of
colour in the history of the United States
to lead and develop a mass movement. He
was the first man, on a mass scale, to give
millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and
destiny and make the Negro feel that he
was somebody.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
American Negro Leader
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JCDC , 2014
“Ambition is the desire to go forward and
improve one’s condition. It is a burning
flame that lights the life of the individual
and makes him see himself in another
state. To be ambitious is to be great in
mind and soul.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey
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JCDC , 2014
“ I read Hegel, Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin and
Mazzini. The writings of these men did much to
influence me in my revolutionary ideas and
activities…But…the book that did more than
any other to fire my enthusiasm was ‘Philosophy
and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.’ It was
unfortunate that I was never able to meet
Garvey.”
-Kwame Nkrumah
Former President of Ghana

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JCDC , 2014
“ Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of
a suffering people. Action, self-reliance,
the vision of self and the future have been
the only means by which the oppressed
have seen and realized the right of their
own freedom.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey

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JCDC , 2014
“…in 1921, Kenyan nationalists, unable to read,
would gather round a reader of Garvey’s
newspaper, The Negro World, and listen to an
article two or three times. The they would run
various ways through the forest, carefully to
repeat the whole, which they had memorized, to
Africans hungry for some doctrine which lifted
them from the servile consciousness in which
Africa lived.”
-Jomo Kenyatta
Former President of Kenya

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JCDC , 2014
“You will make excuse that you have been
in slavery for three hundred years. We
excuse you for that; but you have been
emancipated now one hundred years, and
it is time that you were able to stand upon
the same level as the other peoples,
understanding nature and nature’s laws.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey
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JCDC , 2014
“ It was Marcus Garvey’s philosophy of Pan-Africanism
that initiated the entire freedom movement, which
brought about the independence of African nations. And
had it not been for Marcus Garvey and the foundations
led by him, you would find no independent nations in
the Caribbean today…All the freedom movements that
are taking place…in America were initiated by the work
and teachings of Marcus Garvey.”
-Malcolm X
Black Activist whose father was a vice-president of the UNIA in Detroit

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JCDC , 2014
“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.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey

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JCDC , 2014
“ Mr. Garvey…made a tremendous impact . When I was a little boy of
11 years old, I went to my uncle’s home and saw the picture there of
a black man on the wall…in those days we never had pictures of
black people on any wall…I said to my uncle, “Who is that man?”
And my uncle said, “That is a man who has come to unite all black
people.” I immediately loved him…so I stood on a chair to drink in
his features and I asked my uncle where is this man so that I can
meet him and join him. My uncle looked at me and said he was
dead. Tears began to run down my cheeks-for I felt I had come so
close to the deliverer and he was gone.
-Louis Farrakhan
Black Muslim minister. The founder of that movement.

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JCDC , 2014
“ The ends that 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 even into
eternity.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey

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JCDC , 2014
“A race without authority and power, is a
race without respect.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey

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JCDC , 2014
“ Marcus Garvey sa[id]: ‘Africa towards
Africans.’ You can’t argue with that…If
we find the roots again, we can live.”
-Bob Marley
Singer

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JCDC , 2014
“God Almighty created us all to be free. That the
Negro race became a race of slaves was not the
fault of God Almighty, the Divine Master, it was
the fault of the race. Sloth, neglect, indifference
caused us to be slaves.
Confidence, conviction, action will cause us to
be free men today.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey
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JCDC , 2014
“ I was first a ‘hoofer’…Soon I was a front liner and then a
feature dancer with partners in front of the front line. A
large UNIA conference was being held and Mr. Garvey
gave me permission to sit in on sessions. My
observations later formed the basis of successful
monologues I performed, imitations some of the more
eccentric and popular delegates.”
-Ranny Williams
Actor

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JCDC , 2014
 “
“God and nature first made us what we are,
and then out of our own creative genius,
we make ourselves what we want to be.”

-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey

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JCDC , 2014
“…his idea of relaxation was to go around to
antique shops and buy old pieces and antiques.
When he brought them home he would spend
time and patience placing them in the right
setting, colour scheme and effective
lighting…He enjoyed sitting in an easy chair and
contemplating the beauty of the setting he
created.”
-Amy Jacques Garvey

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“ What night is to the day, is woman to man.
The period of change that brings light out of
darkness, darkness out of light, and semi-
light out of darkness are like the changes
found in woman day by day.
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.”
-The Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey
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JCDC , 2014
 Sources
Garvey, Amy Jacques. The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.
United States: The Majority Press, 1986. Print

Garvey, Amy Jacques. “African Fundamentalism”. The Negro World. 1925.

Print

Hill, Robert A. Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion

to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement
Association Papers. California: University of California, 1987. Print

Jones, Ken. Marcus Garvey Said: A Collection of Quotations from

statements made by Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Jamaica: United
Cooperative Printers, 2002. Print

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Janelle Young , Research Unit ,
JCDC , 2014