Harry Belafonte
I knew Charlie Parker, and he gave us such a gift with his music. He put so much into so little space, and it was tragic that he died so young.Collection: Space
Without the rebellious heart, without people who understand that there's no sacrifice we can make that is too great to retrieve that which we've lost, we will forever be distracted with possessions and trinkets and title.Collection: Great
Peace is necessary. For justice, it is necessary. For hope, it is necessary, for our future.Collection: Future
I grew up in the Great Depression, and the jazz artists and Dixieland musicians were at the core of our communications and enjoyment. They were not passing fancies. They are something that is, and will be, listened to again and again. I have a space of reverence for some of those old jazz stars such as Sydney Bechet and Louis Armstrong.Collection: Great
My activism always existed. My art gave me the platform to do something about the activism.Collection: Art
All too often, I'm sorry to say, I relegated my family to the cracks and margins.Collection: Family
You can cage the singer but not the song.
Although slavery may have been abolished, the crippling poison of racism still persists, and the struggle still continues.
Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.
If you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in people's rights, if you believe in the harmony of all humankind - then you have no choice but to back Fidel Castro as long as it takes!
I'm always suspicious of celebrities that write about their lives.
I'm not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you.
I don't think that we are a species or a people that can exist without making mistakes somewhere along the line.
Movements don't die, because struggle doesn't die.
When I was 20 and 30, my visions for what the world would be, all things were possible.
I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.
Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.
The pursuit of justice is all I have ever known.
America has never been moved to perfect our desire for greater democracy without radical thinking and radical voices being at the helm of any such quest.
I don't think soldiers should be anywhere in the world. I mean, that is a moral and a basic philosophy. I think that the only way to end wars is to have no military and to find other ways in which - I think we should suspend all nuclear weapons.
Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.
What makes a movement work are thousands of parts that come together and express itself in favor of a given destination or objective. You have to find men and women who are willing to play the role that each of these things demand.
I've always been supportive of the right of Israel as a state, and I've always fought against anti-Semitism, even in my own community.
Poverty is terror. Having your Social Security threatened is terror. Having your livelihood as an elderly person slowly disappearing with no replenishment is terror.
If you want to look at the Monroe Doctrine and what happened when we wrote that, we stated what the business would be for America's power, especially in this hemisphere. We have always been the colonizer of this hemisphere, wherever we've been.
You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel.
This generosity that has been offered to the United States says very much about the Venezuelan spirit.
I call President Bush a terrorist. I call those around him terrorists as well: Condoleezza Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales in the Justice Department, and certainly Cheney.
Poverty was my mother's midwife. She had her children in poverty. But she also found a road to bring us a sense of purpose, and she taught us how to be valiant in the face of oppression.
I think there's no city quite like New York, and I've seen most of the developed cities of the world. I admire this place, its energy. It's the repository of so much history and culture and diversity.
I think New York City most represents what it is that America in general aspires to. It's big; it's dense. I've known this city from all of its social arcs. The best that's in America is yet to come. The worst that's in America is yet to come.
John Steinbeck is one of the most under-discussed and under-written-about of all American writers. He is way up there and should stand on a par, or even above, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.
One of the true pleasures of my life has been the work of John Steinbeck. He was one of the people who turned my life around. I had no direct relationship with him, unfortunately.
Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.Collection: Artist
Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live inCollection: Inspirational
When I was born, I was colored. I soon became a Negro. Not long after that I was black. Most recently I was African-American. It seems we're on a roll here. But I am still first and foremost in search of freedom.Collection: Long
If I've impacted on one heart, one mind, one soul, and brought to that individual a greater truth than that individual came into a relationship with me having, then I would say that I have been successful.Collection: Success
Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.Collection: Art
In the gun game, we are the most hunted. The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children.Collection: Children
I am who I am despite what America has put before me. I am who I am despite the obstacles that we have all faced based upon race and based upon social and spiritual humiliation.Collection: Spiritual
The human spirit is resilient and truth - no matter how long you abuse it and how long you try to crush it - will, as Dr. King would say, rise up again, and in the final analysis will prevail.Collection: Crush
As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on.Collection: Matter
From the point of view of the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, the wretched of the Earth... there will never be peace until their condition has been alleviated and until their humanity is in full bloom.Collection: Views
Anti-democracy...is a virus that exists, and pro-democracy is the antibody to that virus, and I think we have to become vigilant, and we have to stay on top of the issues of democracy and freedom.Collection: Freedom
We [Americans] move about the world arrogantly, calling wars when we want, overthrowing governments when we want. There is a price to be paid for it -- look at 9/11. [That] wasn't just bin Laden. Bin Laden didn't come from the abstract. He came from somewhere, and if you look where ... you'll see America's hand of villainy.Collection: War
These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country.Collection: Education
Many who have nothing opposed to the few who have everything, and as long as these disparities remain, as long as these distances remain between people and forces, I think we'll be in a perpetual state of upheaval.Collection: Distance
America can no longer afford to be as arrogant as we've been. We can no longer exempt ourselves from the global family of concern.Collection: America
When I was 40 and looking at 60, it seemed like a thousand miles away. But 62 feels like a week and a half away from 80. I must now get on with those things I always talked about doing but put off.Collection: Half
I don't know what America has really learned. We are too quick to do what's expedient on behalf of our culture of greed and hedonism. We're quite prepared to go to conditions of tyranny in order to sustain that culture, and we do it in the name of democracy, when nothing could be more undemocratic. We do it in the name of saving the values of our society, when the way we behave corrupts those values. We do it in the name of God in whom we believe, when in fact we have corrupted our own vision of the Christian journey.Collection: Christian