Richie Havens Quotes

We tend to think of our selves as the only wholly unique creations in nature, but it is not so. Uniqueness is so commonplace a property of living things that there is really nothing at all unique about it. A phenomenon can't be unique and universal at the same time.

The whole world is a man's birthplace.

I don't know very much about, honestly, about the Middle East, and yet I've played a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures. The thing that I notice is that we're all - there is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture. And, after all, we're all from Africa originally.

In each of us there is a little of all of us.

People will be fascinated. We will think of each other in a far more homogeneous way, because we will know that there is something that is different from us. And when we say 'us,' it will mean as a species.

I like finding that common point between another song and my music. It's like between people; you can be of religion or another, from this country or from another country, but we're all basically the same. It's just the same with songs.

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.

All that tread, the globe are but a handful to the tribes, that slumber in its bosom.

We are all descendants of Adam, and we are all products of racial miscegenation.

Many people don't know, but American Girl Scouts get to travel the world, and that's a very good thing, as the more we can expose our young people to other cultures, the better off we'll be in this increasingly globalized environment.

Our true nationality is mankind.

But we Americans are as other men, exactly. Of one blood, one species, one brain, one figure, one fundamental set of collective instincts, one solitary body of information, one everything. Superiority and inferiority are individual, not racial or national.

We are one species, one people. Every individual on this earth is a member of 'homo sapiens sapiens,' and the geographical variations we see among peoples are simply biological nuances on the basic theme.

Nothing unifies people more than music, more than that universal riff. The one thing that unifies us and the hope that we can have, especially being an artist, is that we can create music that can build bridges and smash down very bad ideas.

Music and dance is universal, and I want to break borders and represent.

I have a friend in every country now.

'Hamlet' is a universal story that concerns us all. These issues do not concern only Muslims, but all people equally, showing that we all share the same problems regardless of religion, nation and culture.

What I've realized is that the joy of meeting and greeting people from all around the world is universal.

The force and the strength for peace will come from people. And that will happen when people start to realize that all the diversity and differences we see of nationalities, of religions, of cultures, of languages, are all beautiful diversities, for they are only on the surface. And deep down we share the same humanity, the global humanity.

Remember always that there not so very much difference between various people as we seem to imagine. Maps and atlases show us countries in different colors. Undoubtedly people do differ from one another, but they resemble each other also a great deal, and it is well to keep this in mind and not misled by colors on the map or by national boundaries.

In every man there is something of all men.

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.

I think a lot of snowflakes are alike...and I think a lot of people are alike too.

There is no great difference in reality between one country and another, because it is always people you meet everywhere. They may look different or be dressed differently, they may have a different education or position; but they are all the same. They are all people to be loved.

I just think we can't do enough of this [student exchanges]... And when you get young children traveling internationally, I think they come back different people. And you can't put a price tag - you can't put a value on that.