Miriam Makeba Quotes
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For instance, we're always fighting amongst each other. Who gives us the arms? And then we become indebted to wherever we are buying them from - with what? The very resources we need to keep there.
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I ask you and all the leaders of the world: Would you act differently, would you keep silent and do nothing if you were in our place? Would you not resist if you were allowed no rights in your own country because the color of your skin is different to that of the rulers, and if you were punished for even asking for equality? I appeal to you, and through you to all the countries of the world, to do everything you can to stop the coming tragedy. I appeal to you to save the lives of our leaders, to empty the prisons of all those who should never have been there.
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When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa.
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I look at the past and I see myself.
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Age is wisdom if one has lived ones life properly.
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He Belafonte was a good teacher and looked after me. He said, 'You have such great talent, you must try not to be a tornado - be like a submarine. It was good advice when I found myself speaking at the UN Committee Against Apartheid and then the UN General Assembly.
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Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them
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It's a really unfair world because life is, where I am; all day long we listen to American music. So I don't see why the radios in the U.S. cannot even put aside one hour a day just to play music that is not American.
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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.
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You are damned and praised, or encouraged or discouraged by those who listen to you, and those who come to applaud you. And to me, those people are very important.
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And I believe that it becomes a troubled continent because there are those who must always cause confusion so that we do not keep these natural resources.
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But if you are going to wear blinders then you do not know the world.
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Be careful, think about the effect of what you say. Your words should be constructive, bring people together, not pull them apart.
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Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that.
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If given a choice, I would have certainly selected to be what I am: one of the oppressed instead of one of the oppressors.
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Age is getting to know all the ways the world turns, so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want, you can at least get out of the way so you won't get run over.
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It is very much the theme of our President, President Thabo Mbeki, whose passion is for Africa to work together, and for Africans to get up and do things for us. We are trying as women to do things for ourselves.
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People in the United States still have a 'Tarzan' movie view of Africa. That's because in the movies all you see are jungles and animals . . . We too watch television and listen to the radio and go to dances and fall in love.
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There are three things I was born with in this world, and there are three things I will have until the day I die-hope, determination, and song.
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I will probably die singing.
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I have one thing in common with the emerging black nations of Africa: We both have voices, and we are discovering what we can do with them.
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my thoughts are like quick little fish that swim out of my grasp.
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African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.
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The conqueror writes history, they came, they conquered and they write. You don't expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us.