I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world.

My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

Artists are the gate keepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.

In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.

Through my singing and acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people's hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.

My future depends mostly upon myself.

Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.

It's called evolution. You must know that. Yes, we are.'She looked up from her book.'I would hope, though, ' she went on, 'that we also have some rather more beautiful ancestors. Don't you?' --Mina

I'm not afraid to die.

Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.

I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry.

The bliss of the Creator forever permeates all of creation, and it is only in the forgetting that misery exists.

Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used--not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.

My debt to you, Belovèd, Is one I cannot pay In any coin of any realm On any reckoning day.

I love being in love. It's the best feeling in the world. I have never felt like this before.

I don't feel as if I'm in competition with myself; not at all.

According to my assessment, even if you have many more troops than others, how can that help you to victory?