Davis: "Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'"

Davis: "Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other."

Davis: "To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women."

Davis: "I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement."

Davis: "Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education."

Davis: "My name became known because I was, one might say accidentally the target of state repression and because so many people throughout the country and other parts of the world organized around the demand for my freedom."

Davis: "We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death."

Davis: "What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before."

Davis: "Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work."

Davis: "What this country needs is more unemployed politicians."

Davis: "We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."

Davis: "As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism."

Davis: "I never saw myself as an individual who had any particular leadership powers."

Davis: "Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty."

Davis: "I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively."

Davis: "Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery - did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime."

Davis: "I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities."

Davis: "And I guess what I would say is that we can't think narrowly about movements for black liberation and we can't necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for liberation."

Davis: "Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today."