A Quote by William Klein
I was fascinated by the Black Panthers because I'd been in contact with the Nation of Islam, thanks to Muhammad Ali, and their way of talking was that the whites were the devil, and they'd get rid of them once they took over.
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Muhammad Ali was my idol, and I always say, if Muhammad Ali had told me the exact same thing my mother, the principal, the security guard, my brothers... you know, the same thing they were telling me that I didn't listen to, I would have listened, just because it came from Muhammad Ali.
If you say, 'I don't care if Muhammad Ali was a Muslim or not; he was just great,' what you're really saying is, 'I don't care about Muhammad Ali.' Same with Prince being black.
Muhammad Ali was a god, an idol and an icon. He was boxing. Any kid that had the opportunity to talk to Ali, to get advice from Muhammad Ali, was privileged. He's always given me time to ask questions, although I was so in awe that I didn't ask questions.
I brought Muhammad Ali to North Korea in 1995. I tried that once. It didn't work out quite that well for me as it did for Dennis Rodman, but I brought Muhammad Ali to Pyongyang, North Korea, as part of a big wrestling event called the World Peace Festival. It was a two-day event that drew over 350,000 people.
Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was - 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within - internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing.
N.W.A were the audio-documentarians of their time. They were trying to shock people with the violence of their language and the subjects they were talking about. The fact that they dressed in guerilla outfits like the Black Panthers made them shocking by their appearance as well.
Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man. Islam doesn't look for a nation to be in better condition than another nation. Islam doesn't care about the land or who own the land. The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam. Any nation or power in this world that tries to get in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy.
O.J. Simpson was primarily interested in O.J. His rise to fame in the late '60s coincided with the period where black athletes were more outspoken and political than in any era. You're talking about the generation of black athletes that came about after Jackie Robinson. Athletes after that were just happy to find a place in sports. But when you got to the mid-'60s, you had athletes like Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, who were very outspoken on the issues of race and civil rights.
I was like, 'Prince, prince. Prince Ali. People know that from 'Aladdin.' I'm a big fan of Muhammad Ali. I can't be Muhammad Ali. I'm looking up royal - Mustafa. Mustafa's a royal name. Prince Mustafa, OK fine.' Prince Mustafa Ali came from that, and it's an easier name for people to remember, too: Prince Ali.
Muhammad Ali inside the ring and Muhammad Ali outside the ring were totally different men; his abrasive, magnetic daring and infectious self-love outside the ring galvanized the world and distracted many from his sniper's precision. He was a heavyweight with the fluttering gracefulness of a middleweight.
Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia and Egypt - got rid of them.
Do you have any idea what Ali meant to black people? He was the leader of a nation, the leader of Black America. As a young black, at times I was ashamed of my color; I was ashamed of my hair. And Ali made me proud.
Muhammad Ali - he was a magnificent fighter and he was an icon... Every head must bow, every knee must bend, every tongue must confess, thou art the greatest, the greatest of all time, Muhammad, Muhammad Ali.
Obviously we were having an effect, because all these people were clamouring to meet us. Like Muhammad Ali, for instance.
I was fascinated by all of it. The sounds of the theater and the audience, their rapture when a play took over and moved them and held them quietly... When the audience was truly moved, it was absolutely quiet. They were in a communion because they were learning the truth about themselves.
I had talked to my agent a lot over the years about not being interested in stereotypical "black films" [because] I didn't like the way they were representing black people over and over and over again in the same way.
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