Muhammad Ali Quotes

Kunta Kinte's strength derives from the knowledge of where he comes from, but it struck me that I don't know where I come from. I understand that my last name is Kirby, that I was born in London, third-generation Jamaican, and at some point along the line, that name was changed. I didn't know my history past my grandparents.

I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

I discovered that there is Indian blood in my ancestry on my father's side - a fact that had not been talked about in my family. No wonder I've often been cast in exotic roles - Indian princesses, Russian revolutionaries, Algerians, Gypsies and Greeks.

I stand by 'Roots' as symbol of the fate of my people.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?

If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.

If anything is life-changing, being the descendant of a slave is.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to put that out there so blatantly, so that before you listen to me you know that I'm Asian. But I thought it was sort of cool to embrace the Korean half of me, which I love.

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don't belong anymore to anyone, that I'm not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

My forebears refused to cut the sugar cane for plantation owners, and I am recognisably a product of that background.

I'm slowly feeling more Chinese and feel I should be more proud of being Chinese and appreciate where I've come from.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.

I believe in the old, because it shows us where we come from - where our souls have risen from. And I believe in the new, because it gives us the opportunity to create who we are becoming.

This form is only an application for a marriage license and yet it asks for my color. I looked at my arm and wrote “pink”, Your assistant then said that I have to pick from White, Brown, Black, Yellow or Red. The form says I answer under penalty of perjury, so I want to tell the truth, but the city of New York must explain to me how I tell what color I am. I am a trained artist and I can assure you that my skin color is not a white. My ancestors came from Germany and the yellow Mongols and Huns raped and pillaged there, not to mention the blacks from North Africa. So what is the test a citizen should use to determine color if not pigment?

I was Everett LeRoi Jones. My grandfather's name was Everett.

You can't build a future if you don't have a past.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history... this is what makes you strong. It's not looking out that's going to do that - it's looking in.

I went through a soul-searching period. I went to a place that was a little bit more reflective and dark. I began to look at who I am, who I was, where I come from, what my culture is, and who I am as an African-American person in America.

We can't bypass our heritage. We can't bypass the knowledge of who we are. You don't take a DNA test to see if you believe in freedom. Freedom is taught, and teaching the Constitution - I won't go on too much.

If you forget your history, you forget who you are.

I didn't particularly change my name to Fonda because I knew who Fondas were. It's still going to remain a mystery. I keep it as a mystery. So, maybe one day I'll tell the story of how I changed my last name.