Admiration is the basis of ignorance.
Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.
You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.
The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.
Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.
Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.
My songs are very personal, which means they are fantastically therapeutic to write, but performing them night after night is emotionally draining.
I want to live in a city where the police don't shoot you.
Only by establishing military supremacy were the European and North American colonizers able to eliminate the crafts and industries of Third World peoples, control their markets, extort tribute, undermine their cultures, destroy their villages, steal their lands and natural resources, enslave their labor, and accumulate vast wealth.