Like any other people, like fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in every land, when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace.

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.

A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into.

A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

Burning one hectare of grassland gives off more, and more damaging, pollutants than 6,000 cars. And we are burning in Africa, every single year, more than one billion hectares.

The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they've been at other times.

To submit to chance is to reveal the self and its obsessions.

And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.

Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

There's wisdom in wine.

I'm chasing my dreams straight to the top - into a sky that has no limits.