Burning Spear Quotes

I wanted to be as genuine as possible because all those people like Jimmie Lee Jackson - me, Mike Brown, all these people - we're all the same; we're not much different.

Throughout my life I have cared as deeply about the songs of all peoples as I have about the rights of all peoples.

We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men.

I'm a political poet - let us say a 'human' poet, a poet that's concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that's what I'm going to use.

All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome.

Either you fight for everybody, or you're really just fighting for yourself and people like you.

The unified message in this fight against systemic racism and racial inequality is something that our entire Association is united to fight against.

No matter where you're born or what country you're from, you connect with 'This is America.' It speaks to people; it connects right to your soul. It calls out injustice, celebrates life, and reunites us all at the same time.

In some perfect world where human nature is less messy and history less fraught, any and all people who had ever suffered discrimination would find common cause, gathering together under one big anti-bigotry banner.

Us as a people, we can't do it on our own. We have to understand that we're not each other's enemy. We have to stop discriminating against each other due to class and due to race and due to location or financial position.

I have searched all night and day for new and better words that could express my feelings and fear for the people of this country. I found no new words. I only have no hope-filled insight to deliver. I only have this warning to all Americans: Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it will one day do to us all.

What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don't come together as Baptists or Methodists. You don't catch hell 'cause you're a Baptist, and you don't catch hell 'cause you're a Methodist... You don't catch hell because you're a Democrat or a Republican. You don't catch hell because you're a Mason or an Elk. And you sure don't catch hell 'cause you're an American; 'cause if you was an American, you wouldn't catch no hell. You catch hell 'cause you're a Black man. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason.

Marches alone won't bring integration when human respect is disintegratin'

Our stories are different; our pain is the same.

Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with the 'demonized' so that the demonizing will stop; it stands with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

I want the white people to understand my people.

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it in South Africa.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

People have a right to have their lives witnessed; if we coexist with the systems that abuse people, then we have a duty to understand.

It was natural to see the struggle for dignity for black people in America as a sister struggle of the Jewish struggle. So growing up, it was always a part of my breakfast cereal to think of myself as someone who was part of a larger struggle.

I think literature can make familiar the unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar is very much about the dispossessed, and so the value of literature seems to me to go into the stories that not everybody wants to tell.

What breaks my heart is suffering of any kind. Too often, our world is divisive and cruel where it needs to be uniting and loving.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

As writers, we don't just need to write about poverty or war or the immigrant experience.