102+ John Henrik Clarke Quotes On History, Bible And Scholarly

John Henrik Clarke was an American historian, professor, and a pioneer in the creation of Pan-African and Africana studies. He was a major proponent of Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism, and was a leading scholar on African history. He wrote extensively on African and African American history and culture, and his works have been widely influential in the academic and broader African-American communities. Following is our collection on famous quotes by John Henrik Clarke on history, bible, scholarly.

Top 10 John Henrik Clarke Quotes

1. 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.
2. White people think when you love yourself you hate them. No, when I love myself they become irrelevant to me.
3. Most human behavior is controlled by images. Image is a factor in how people look at themselves and what they use to reflect themselves. The control of images is a major factor in world power.
4. It's time for Black people to stop playing the separating game of geography, of where the slave ship put us down. We must concentrate on where the slave ship picked us up.
5. Africa is our center of gravity, our cultural and spiritual mother and father, our beating heart, no matter where we live on the face of this earth.
6. I will only debate with my equals. All others I teach.
7. Every form of true education trains the student in self-reliance
8. Everything that touches YOUR life, must be an instrument of YOUR liberation or tossed into the trash cans of HISTORY
9. A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson.
10. I don't attend any particular church now. I don't believe in denominations, nor do I believe in organized religion.

John Henrik Clarke Short Quotes

• The first light of human consciousness and the world's first civilizations were in Africa.
• The Arabs are deep in the slave trade right now.
• If God is love, then God has no stepchildren to love.
• The one thing you never integrate at the ruin of your own pleasure is your institutions.
• You shouldn't bear humiliations.
• We're all in a test. With or without God, we're in a test.
• Educating a child won't be difficult if you get through to the parent.
• I believe in doing good for good's sake.
• To make one people better than the other would be ungodly in the first place.
• Break all the TVs, burn all the Bibles.

John Henrik Clarke Quotes About History

To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you. — John Henrik Clarke

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began. — John Henrik Clarke

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, African-American historians began to look at their people's history from their vantage point and their point of view. — John Henrik Clarke

History is like a clock, it tells you your time of day. — John Henrik Clarke

You look at a clock and it tells you it's eight o'clock, you know the number of hours that has been before eight; you know the number of hours you've got after eight. You can now measure your time to see if you can get done a number of things you've got to get done. History serves the same purpose. — John Henrik Clarke

Man's most intelligent age may have gotten lost in history. — John Henrik Clarke

History is a compass that you locate yourself on the map of human geography, politically, culturally, financially. — John Henrik Clarke

John Henrik Clarke Quotes About People

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. — John Henrik Clarke

My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, the in your imagination God suppose to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people. — John Henrik Clarke

Our concept of beauty is taken from Hollywood, which is anti-black. We don't see ourselves as beautiful in most cases. Although we are naturally one of the most beautiful peoples out there, we don't see it. We don't get the point. Hollywood sets the standards. — John Henrik Clarke

Violence among all people is based on dissatisfaction, frustration and crushed ambition and people who don't know who to strike at and who to blame, and not willing to blame themselves. — John Henrik Clarke

We have different levels of slavery. We've got educational slavery. All the major religions of the world, even Christianity and Islam, are engaged in some form of servitude of people. I don't look favorably on either one although I think properly practiced all religions are basically good. — John Henrik Clarke

People rise and fall on the basis of the makings of institutions. — John Henrik Clarke

We will have taken one giant step forward when we face this reality: Powerful people never teach powerless people how to take their power away from them. — John Henrik Clarke

There's such a craving to make Egypt white or Asian, people don't just even listen to you. When you explain why would anyone build anything as enduring as the Pyramids in Africa before they would build anything of that nature at home? — John Henrik Clarke

I say if black people don't unite and begin to support themselves, their communities and their families, they might as well begin to go out of business as a people. Nobody's going to have any mercy. And nobody's going to have any compunction about making slaves out of them. — John Henrik Clarke

Slavery ended and left its false images of black people intact — John Henrik Clarke

John Henrik Clarke Famous Quotes And Sayings

If you expect the present day school system to give history to you, you are dreaming. This, we have to do ourselves. The Chinese didn't go out in the world and beg people to teach Chinese studies or let them teach Chinese studies. The Japanese didn't do that either. People don't beg other people to restore their history; they do it themselves. — John Henrik Clarke

You have to convince the adults that if a child is to learn his culture, he or she will have to see his mother and father reading about it, and explaining it to him. Then it gets a legitimacy it otherwise would never have. Until then, his learning is limited. — John Henrik Clarke

In the African matrilineal society, the lineage of the bloodline comes down through the female side. The Arabs who invaded East Africa and other parts of Africa reversed it to the patrilineal where everything comes down through the male side and the woman has no basic rights except that which the male is willing to grant her. — John Henrik Clarke

You can see in our churches most of the males are pastors. Most of the deacons are males. But if the woman withdrew her support from our churches, you'd have to close the doors. — John Henrik Clarke

What we might have been dealing with here - with the building of the Pyramids - is an age that got lost. Man had to learn again what they previously had known. — John Henrik Clarke

Now, Jews integrate but they don't destroy their institutions. They don't close the synagogue. They don't stop having special Jewish graveyards. They don't stop having special Jewish holidays. Why can't we understand that we can have things special to us and still comingle and integrate with others. — John Henrik Clarke

In a matrilineal society, a woman has basic rights that no one has to grant her but you can't take it away from her because the society is based on the concept that the lifegiver is equal to those she gave the life to. And that will remain... until you find a pregnant man. — John Henrik Clarke

After the Moslem Africans lost control over Spain, they began to prey on the Africans further to the south. They destroyed the great independent states in West Africa, and subsequently set Africa up for the Western slave trade and the Arabs were in the slave trade before Islam and they are still in the slave trade. — John Henrik Clarke

What has been imposed on religion is not religion itself but the custom of those who have been converted to it. I think that the most atrocious of all of this is Islam. They were in the slave trade before Islam. The Arabs were natural slave traders. They were the people who were called on to conquer us, unfortunately. — John Henrik Clarke

What example do you have of anything like the Pyramids outside of Africa? You have them in Mexico, but that can be traced to early African migration. So the African created mound culture. — John Henrik Clarke

The difference between the Pyramids in Egypt and the ones in Mexico is there is nothing inside the Mexican Pyramids. In the African Pyramids, the whole inside is a burial chamber. So they were really gravesites to nobility. — John Henrik Clarke

I have no faith in much organized religion because I think it's by a bunch of hypocrites and practiced by a bunch of hypocrites. They don't mean what they say because all of them are in the slave trade one way or the other. — John Henrik Clarke

We're in a world of propaganda. Some of it is all to effective. — John Henrik Clarke

You walk out in the street, we don't know if we're going to get across. It's a test. — John Henrik Clarke

You look at the Pyramids. They're not one fraction of an inch off in terms of their alignment. They were built without a bonding agent. — John Henrik Clarke

We never see ourselves as heroes and sometimes when we do it is a hero that has made a fortune as a clown or a boxer. And there is no lasting value in either one of those. — John Henrik Clarke

This kind of collective society - giving to each according to his need - existed in Africa not only before Karl Marx, but also before Europe. — John Henrik Clarke

We 've lost something else: the relationship between men and women. — John Henrik Clarke

If you don't like the situation, if you are afraid and can't deal with it, nothing wrong with your legs, get out of there. — John Henrik Clarke

The southern white Baptists now want to integrate with the black Baptist church. I say that would be the end of it. In the first place, most white southern Baptists can't preach, their intentions are not that good and we make a different joyful noise unto the Lord than white people. When we say, "Lord Jesus, personal savior", we may not mean the same thing as what they mean. — John Henrik Clarke

Most of the Pyramids were observatories in perfect alignment. Some Pyramids were aligned so that the sun would hit them at a certain time of the year. And yet, it could rain all year, and not a drop of rain could get inside. No one covered the hole. So that took some high intelligence to line a thing up so that the exact time of year when the sun was in the exact position, it would light up the inside of that crypt. — John Henrik Clarke

I think that you're just as close to Jesus if you use the equipment he gave you other than to call on him to do for you what you can do for yourself. — John Henrik Clarke

The standard reason for Thanksgiving doesn't mean nothing to me. — John Henrik Clarke

I think many times we charge the Lord for things we can do ourselves. If only we realized how well we have been equipped. — John Henrik Clarke

I attended a Baptist church as a child and was an avid reader starting with the Bible. — John Henrik Clarke

My mother really held the family together. She was a perfect example of the kind of black woman I would love to see again. She ruled my father with an iron hand, yet she barely ever raised her voice above a whisper. — John Henrik Clarke

There has been a struggle to reclaim the African self. That struggle has been on the part of a minority of dedicated African-Americans who never gave up our African identity at no time during our stay here. — John Henrik Clarke

I think that Jesus-dependency has taken over our minds, and too many of our institutions. — John Henrik Clarke

The population of African people in the United States is far in excess of six small European nations. Where we are going? We have to go back as best we can to where slavery and colonialism took us from. And they took us from a concept of nation management and nation maintenance. We have been so long away from home we unfortunately have forgotten how we ruled states before the foreigners got there. — John Henrik Clarke

...education has but one honorable purpose, one alone, everything else is a waste of time......that is to train the student to be a proper handler of power. — John Henrik Clarke

Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil. — John Henrik Clarke

Clowns don't build institutions, nor do boxers. — John Henrik Clarke

In Africa, the woman was co-equal. In Europe, the woman was a vassal. To some extent, she still is. — John Henrik Clarke

I believe in spirituality, which is out there. — John Henrik Clarke

It is not uncommon for ignorant and corrupt men to falsely charge others with doing what they imagine that they themselves, in their narrow minds and experience, would have done under the circumstances of a given case, and the surest check, often the only check, on such perjury, is to recognize the impossibility that men of larger instruction and resources and experience could have been guilty of such conduct. — John Henrik Clarke

Your behavior determines, to some extent, the destiny of your nation and your group. — John Henrik Clarke

African people need to stop shouting 'nationtime' until they are clear about the responsibilities of running a nation. — John Henrik Clarke

If you struck your mother or your father, it was punishable by death because you struck at the whole society. You struck at the morality of the society itself. This is what we have lost. — John Henrik Clarke

With no specific procedure, man arrived at sweeping conclusions about the universe that have proven to be true. — John Henrik Clarke

I could pull all kinds of games on my mother. I couldn't pull any games on my father. — John Henrik Clarke

No more religion anymore. No more who's a Moslem and who's a Protestant. — John Henrik Clarke

Service is the highest form of prayer as far as I am concerned. — John Henrik Clarke

When people laugh at your institutions and convince you that you have to adopt theirs - adopt their dress, adopt their taste in food - you are a prisoner to those people. — John Henrik Clarke

If the Africans and Arabs were ruling Spain from 711 to 1492, had they destroyed the Catholic church, they still would be ruling Spain to this day because that's the institution that held them together. The institute that gave them the only hope was their church. This is why we are so depressed because the institutions of hope that would cause fulfillment amongst us has either been destroyed or laughed at. — John Henrik Clarke

All life is a test one way or the other. — John Henrik Clarke

In a collective society, everybody's business is everybody's business. — John Henrik Clarke

Whoever the Lord is, he'd give us a facility. He's given you hands, legs and might so you use that facility to rise above the lowly status. Failing that, he gave you two good legs, just run like hell. — John Henrik Clarke

Man's attitude towards the universe and his opinion of the universe predates the scientific probe of the universe. — John Henrik Clarke

To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful. — John Henrik Clarke

It is too often forgotten that when the Europeans gained enough maritime skills and gunpowder to conquer most of the world, they not only colonized the bulk of the world's people but they colonized the interpretation of history itself. Human history was rewritten to favor them at the expense of other people. The roots of modern racism can be traced to this conquest and colonization. — John Henrik Clarke

Eat bread. You don't know if it's been polluted. Drink water, you don't know whether it's been polluted. So living is a test. — John Henrik Clarke

Your group has a right and responsibility to preside over your behavior and you have a responsibility to make that behavior in a manner that does not endanger the group. — John Henrik Clarke

I make a special point of working on Thanksgiving Day. I have friends I go out with but I even make it plain to them. The standard reason for Thanksgiving doesn't mean nothing to me. — John Henrik Clarke

The white woman has never had the co-equal status that the African woman has had. — John Henrik Clarke

If we don't unite, chances are we will go back into slavery. — John Henrik Clarke

The impact of racism has changed our look at ourselves because basically racism was meant to make us look unfaithfully at ourselves, and to not treasure our institutions. — John Henrik Clarke

If we are going to be masters of our destiny, we must be masters of the ideas that influence that destiny. — John Henrik Clarke

The African had opinions about the universe that eventually turned out to be true. — John Henrik Clarke

You should not bear insults. — John Henrik Clarke

Attending church is one thing, belonging is another. — John Henrik Clarke

Each generation must assume the responsibility of securing their manhood, their womanhood, the definition of their being on earth that in the final analysis is nationhood. — John Henrik Clarke

Some of us say, "Lord knows how much I can bear". I think you can assume that you can bear more than you have a right to bear. — John Henrik Clarke

If people do not know where they have been and what they have been they don't know what they are. They don't know where they going to have to go or where they still have to be. — John Henrik Clarke

People get overwhelmed with folklore as fact. Take the Exodus. The Exodus did not occur. It could not have occurred. Wasn't necessary for it to occur. The Jews walked into Africa over a 16-mile land until they built the Suez Canal - that land is still there. Why would they have to leave by the sea. They didn't come by the sea. Certain people think you are against their religion when you use common sense. — John Henrik Clarke

Europeans not only colonized most of the world, they colonized information about the world. — John Henrik Clarke

Life Lessons by John Henrik Clarke

1. John Henrik Clarke taught us the importance of reclaiming African history, culture, and identity. He showed us the power of knowledge to empower and liberate those who have been oppressed and marginalized. Lastly, he demonstrated the importance of critical thinking, research, and education in order to create a more equitable and just society.