Miriam Makeba Quotes

He is a very smart cookie, Michael. He knows what he wants, he knows what he is doing. I have nothing but admiration. Also, he is a very kind person.

Bob Dylan: I do know what my songs are about.
Playboy: And what's that?
Bob Dylan: Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve.

Let's go for a drive OK? Well I'll go for a drive, you'll go for a ride. The person who drives the car they go for a drive, the other people they go for a ride. People don't know that, tell them when they're in your car. Say "you assholes are goin' for a ride!

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.

I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin' a road other men have gone down
I'm seein' your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

I think we need some new Christmas carols with a more modern approach. Of course, I wouldn't abandon the religious theme completely. How about "Holy Christ, the Christmas Tree's on Fire"? Or "Jesus, Can You Believe It's Christmas Again?" This ought to get the ball rolling; I'm hoping you people will take it from here.

But what's the alternative? What's the alternative to pumping out a unit every nine months? Pointless careerism? Pointless careerism, putting on a man tailored suit and shoulder pads and imitating all the worst behavior of men? Is this the noblest thing that women can think of?

The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.

When people show you who they are, believe them, the first time. Not the 29th time!

The people who are trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness.

Hannah: Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit.

[W]hen the President's visitors came to Guinea, we were all called on to go and entertain them. I've never seen a country that did what Sékou Touré did for artists. Even in South Africa today we are not nurtured like that.