Kamasi Washington Quotes

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

I refuse to be pushed around anymore.

If you don't want to be a slave, stop acting like a slave.

You know, you can only get beat up so much. And then you turn it around, and you're like, OK, we're not taking this anymore.

I've always fought against being controlled and manipulated and stomped upon by circumstances.

The first slave to read and write was the first to run away.

We were not designed to be dominated.

Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and realized the light of their own freedom.

I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity.

If you have security, you can rebel; if you don't, you hold on to any scraps of it that you have.

If you want to be a real human being - a real woman, a real man - you cannot tolerate things which put you to indignation, to outrage. You must stand up. I always say to people, 'Look around; look at what makes you unhappy, what makes you furious, and then engage yourself in some action.'

People have to liberate themselves, because liberation is not a single act. It's a question of eternal vigilance. Otherwise, you'll just become enslaved by someone else.

Even in the darkest regions, people have discovered their right of freedom.

Not by the forces of civil war can you govern the very weakest woman. You can kill that woman, but she escapes you then; you cannot govern her. No power on earth can govern a human being, however feeble, who withholds his or her consent.

If we are not represented, we are slaves.

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

I am not convinced the truth can make men free, but I believe it a beginning.

You don't have to be a rock star - if you don't like the situation you're in, you don't have to settle for it.

If we really want liberty - if we really want liberty - then we need to go out and get it, we need to take it, because nobody is going to give it to us. And we need to do it now.

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today.

You can stay true to yourself and your friends, you can do the right thing, you can do with your life whatever you want to. I think that's a lovely message.

But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been.

I'm stronger knowing that while Donna Rice could be sold, she could not be bought.

I think of my films as not necessarily political but more moral. Between my father, my stepfather, and my mother - they all felt pretty passionately about the importance of standing up and doing the right thing, and none of them were suck-ups. What motivates me is usually abuse of power.

We are not going to subjugate ourselves to a constitution ... signing away all our rights and agreeing to be slaves.