June Jordan Quotes

Whether it's right or wrong, fight for what you believe in.

I think when you're in my position as an artist, I can say what I want and talk about the issues that matter.

I love telling a story through song. It helps me take it to a deeper place.

I'll talk all this craziness in my music, but when I have your attention, and you're listening to me, I'll talk about what I want to talk about and what I think we need to address.

I will always, forever, write songs, and wherever they're meant to be is where they'll be.

All good art should be political, I think, and inevitably it all becomes political really, in one way or another.

What's more American than young people speaking their mind over things they had to create over pots and pans and electronically because music was taken out of schools? What's more American than making something out of nothing? What's more gospel than rap music?

You should be able to do you. That's what differentiates an artist from a singer.

Art can be political, but when it becomes politicized, the purity is ruined.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

I always thought that writing poetry was in itself a political act.

I'm realizing this more and more that it's one thing to get involved with your own political beliefs and stand behind you believe in personally.

The time-honored role of the artist [is] to speak truth to power.

The courage to be yourself is the essence of hip hop

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

I believe myself to be a worthwhile and inventive performer in my own right. But I'm not in a league with Lenny [Bruce], certainly not in terms of social commentary.

If you come across an American artist right now who has no political opinions or is afraid of talking politics, be very concerned.

Instead of noting down things I’m unlikely to forget, I will write a poem. Even if I have never written one before and even if I never do so again, I will at least know that I once had the courage to put my feelings into words.

I'm an actress, primarily. I love to write poetry. I've been writing poetry since I was 12 years old.

Good is towing the line, being behaved, being quiet, being passive, fitting in, being liked, and great is being messy, having a belly, speaking your mind, standing up for what you believe in, fighting for another paradigm, not letting people talk you out of what you know to be true.

Making music and art is about expressing something that's universally human, maybe even beyond human, at best.

There's more substance in my prose and my poetry than in all my films together. Writing is a more direct way of expressing yourself because, in cinema, you always have finances, organization, actors, technical apparatus and all that stuff coming in between.

I know that I'm freer as a hip-hopper than as an executive. Even as a black man, I enjoy more freedom as a hip-hopper than as a black man. That, s controversial to say, but it's the truth.

I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it.

What I became a comedian for was to get my art out. To get some of these feelings and things I had on my chest out. I don't care if people believe them, listen to them, change their ways, or think, or any of that kind of crap. I'm interested in showing off. I'm the same kid from sixth grade who stood up and said "watch this."