Harry Belafonte Quotes

If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.

... within every form of oppression lies the seeds of liberation.

This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.

The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women.

It is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle.

To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/ spiritual leap and become more 'human' human beings. In order to change/ transform the world, they must change/ transform themselves.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

Struggle for freedom. Where people are denied the right of choice, recourse to such struggle is the only means of achieving their liberties.

If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.

There's nothing automatic about political change, about liberation.

I am not an anti to anything which will bring freedom to my class.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

My fellow revolutionaries, liberation is a noble cause. We must fight to obtain it.

The work does not end with the abolition of slavery but only begins.

No doubt it is also necessary to improve the classes who now oppress you, but you will never succeed in doing this unless you begin by improving yourselves.

The hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It will come, and whether brought on by generous energy of our own minds or by the bloody process of St. Domingo... is a leaf of our history not yet turned over.

I often think of Audre Lorde and her saying that we don't live and we don't fight for one specific struggle.

The 'Grace of Kings' begins as a very dark, complicated world filled with injustices - among them the oppressed position of women - but gradually transforms into something better through a series of revolutions. But since real social change takes a long time, even by the end of the book, only the seeds of deep change have been planted.

Once you admit how bad it feels to live in a broken society, you can start to resist it, and imagine a better one.

Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom? 'Cause all I ever have… redemption songs; redemption songs.

Revolt, for you have nothing to lose but your chains and your [refugee] tents!

We need to create a new revolution, and to do that, don’t waste your life: stop pleasing people, and become who you always wanted to be.

Tremble not before the free man, but before the slave who has chains to break.