Miriam Makeba Quotes

I was born in a poor country. I was poor, but I lived all my life with what I had. I didn’t spend more than I had. Cape Verde is not the only place where there are poor people

If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilized discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.

...entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.

It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. Any existing distinction between the wise and the stupid, between the rich and the poor, comes down to a matter of education.

It's a tragedy that a lot of people know more about Shakespeare than about Cao Xueqin.

Prema (love): practise that; develop that; spread that; and all the hatreds and jealousies of today will disappear. That is the duty of the Divine Life Society, here as well as elsewhere.

Did I? That was extremely immodest and foolish of me, my apologies. I would never dare to be so presumptuous. I am only interested in the legacy my father has left behind, and I would like to work towards giving it strength and respect for as long as I live.

All the colors of the world should be
Loving each other wholeheartedly,
Yes, it's alright,
Take my message to your brother and tell him twice,
Spread the word and try to teach the man
Who's hating his brother when hate won't do,
When we're all the same,
'Cause the blood inside me is inside of you.

Richard II by William Shakespeare

Meat eating orchids forgive no one just yet
Cut myself on angel hair and baby's breath
Broken hymen of your highness, I'm left black
Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back.

James Baldwin was born for truth. It called upon him to tell it on the mountains, to preach it in Harlem, to sing it on the Left Bank in Paris. His honesty and courage would lead him to see truth and to write truth in poetry, drama, fiction, and essay. He was a giant.

The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had no life. He passed through the world so lightly that he left no print. He melted so passively into Oxford that he is invisible.

Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.

Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children … It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.