Top 106 Quotes & Sayings by Harry Belafonte

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.

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.

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.

When I was 20 and 30, my visions for what the world would be, all things were possible.

All too often, I'm sorry to say, I relegated my family to the cracks and margins.

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.

Movements don't die, because struggle doesn't die.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

This generosity that has been offered to the United States says very much about the Venezuelan spirit.

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.

You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel.

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.

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

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.

Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.

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.

My activism always existed. My art gave me the platform to do something about the activism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Peace is necessary. For justice, it is necessary. For hope, it is necessary, for our future.

Although slavery may have been abolished, the crippling poison of racism still persists, and the struggle still continues.

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.

I don't think that we are a species or a people that can exist without making mistakes somewhere along the line.

The pursuit of justice is all I have ever known.

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.

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.

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 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.

Poverty is terror. Having your Social Security threatened is terror. Having your livelihood as an elderly person slowly disappearing with no replenishment is terror.

I'm always suspicious of celebrities that write about their lives.

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.

No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution.

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.

I think being born in America and growing up exclusively within the American boundaries of race and race oppression is a very different experience for those of us who grew up under the boundaries of race and race experience in the Caribbean or for those who grew up in Africa.

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.

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.

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.

I don't find inspiration on Wall Street. I don't find that in Beverly Hills. I don't find that in places where opportunity resides unbridled, and I think the real creative energy and the real juice is in where people are caught, in the economic abyss.

In poor environment, I find great inspiration. Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression.

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.

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.

As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on.

Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.

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.

Why are we mute? Where are our leaders, our legislators? Where is the church?

I am a man who perceives life in a certain way, a man who rejects things that defecate on humankind, who rejects anything that will not give people room for dissent.

I would hope with all my heart, that Jay Z not take personally what was said... I would like to take this opportunity to say to Jay Z and Beyonce: I’m wide open, my heart is filled with nothing but hope and the promise that we can sit and have a one-on-one to understand each other.

The USA has more people in prison that any other country, including countries with much larger populations. 13% of the population is black but 80% of the people in prison are black, mostly for soft crimes.

Although we had a lot of villainy here in America, Adolf Hitler was certainly the most visible illustration of what would happen if fascism went unchallenged.

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.

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.

Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.

Terrorism is in many, many ways the final utterance of voices unheard.

Where is the raised voice of black America? Why are we mute?

There's an old saying in the days of slavery, there are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master to exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. That gave you privilege. Colin Powell is permitted to come into the house of the master, as long as he will serve the master according to the master's dictates. Now, when Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.

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 in

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.

Since I have escaped the harshness of the economic bounds of poverty, I have stayed very connected to it spiritually. I reside and live and go and socialize and exist among those who suffer daily from the relationship that they have to poverty, Black men and women who are incarcerated. Actually, all people who are incarcerated, not just Black.