In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.

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.

He won’t stop the war until you give him the peace prize.

I have visualised my imagination so clearly and so consistently that it has manifested itself into my reality.

I'm going to build my own slam.

The ultimate fact of the universe is love; and its sway is all-comprehensive, and absolutely certain of final victory.

Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

You've tried to reform what will not learn. Shut doors on traits that you wish were dead; They will open a window and return.

I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.

Would rather learn from failures I'm proud of than take pride in success I don't believe in.

There were dragons to slay in the old days. Nixon was a good dragon.

All thinking begins with wondering