Miriam Makeba Quotes

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

Speaking out is important for me because everyone should be treated equally.

We must speak up for those who do not dare to speak, those who are not allowed to, and those who cannot.

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us our hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space.

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom. I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.

I suffered first as a child from discrimination, poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.

There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in issues of social justice, political freedom, and civil rights.

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!

If you care about injustice, and if you care about freedom, and you care about human rights, then you care about them everywhere.

I have spent all my life advocating on behalf of the poor, oppressed and marginalized. As a social justice and human rights activist, and now as President of the Republic of Malawi, I have a deep appreciation for the challenges of those on the margins of society.

Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.

Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.

Until we are all free, we are none of us free.

What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.

The days of humiliation, of second-class citizens and of inequality are over and gone forever.

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

The rights of all of us are diminished when the rights of any one of us are threatened.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

Liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result.