Jimmy Cliff Quotes

South Central is just who I am. Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out.

When ghetto living seems normal, you have no shame, no privacy.

I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings.

Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out. They don't want to and they don't have the means to sustain it. That's where my heart is and that's what I think about all the time.

The reason most of the children are having problems in any inner-city neighborhood is because they don't see enough positive role models in their own environment.

I grew up in Brownsville; most of the kids I grew up with went to jail, not Yale. If they had heard of Yale, they thought it was a lock to pick.

My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college.

If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

I do remember the numbers runners, I do remember the poverty and bread lines. Harlem stays with you forever.

I am constantly accused of being 'First World.' So what should I do? I can't apologise for my environment, upbringing, aesthetic.

In looking at difficulties in the black American community over the years, it has always astounded me how much white Americans take for granted the rich and utterly decisive heritage of Western culture.

If I could help every ghetto, I would.

Those inner-cities, they're not giving kids a chance. They're not giving the teachers a chance to really help those kids. They're making it real tough. You're either gonna help or you're hurting your own country.

Ghetto isn't a place. Ghetto is more in the mind and how you feel about your life.

We have to take real steps to break down the culture of benefit dependency and failure which blights too many urban areas.

How does one endure in a place they shouldn't be condemned to live in? You could take that same question and apply it to any number of neighborhoods in any number of cities.

We need a president who doesn't just visit our forgotten communities for rallies but one who lives in them - one who knows the pain and suffering that comes with being unseen and unheard.

This is what I think about poverty: why waste the potential of people? You never know what you've got going in society unless you give people a chance.

I think it goes back to whether or not race and class - that is, race and poverty - is not becoming even more of a constraint. Because with the failing public schools, I worry that the way that my grandparents got out of poverty, the way that my parents became educated, is just not going to be there for a whole bunch of kids.

I grew up in the ghetto, and the thing is when there were problems, I knew when to get away.

I didn't have to leave my neighborhood to be surrounded by the things that 'Super Fly' is about. It was easier than most scripts because it was about an environment that I knew.

I've seen a lot of poverty - coming up as a young child, lost hopes and dreams and people that never had a chance to have a decent quality of life. I believe we can do a lot greater than that.

We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.

Every time I go to Africa, I feel like I hit true north. There is a depth of feeling that I have for the continent, in the richness of the people, the suffering, but also the transcendent joy that is there - it's like nowhere else on the planet.