Harry Belafonte Quotes

You can cage the singer but not the song.

— Harry Belafonte

“If you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in people's rights, if you believe in the harmony of all humankind - then you have no choice but to back Fidel Castro as long as it takes!”

— Harry Belafonte

“Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.”

— Harry Belafonte

“I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.”

— Harry Belafonte

“Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa ... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.”

— Harry Belafonte

“This generosity that has been offered to the United States says very much about the Venezuelan spirit.”

— Harry Belafonte

I've always been supportive of the right of Israel as a state, and I've always fought against anti-Semitism, even in my own community.

— Harry Belafonte

“You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel.”

— Harry Belafonte

In the gun game, we are the most hunted. The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children,

— Harry Belafonte

“Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live in”

— Harry Belafonte

“Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization's anchor. We are the compass for humanity's conscience.”

— Harry Belafonte

“Many who have nothing opposed to the few who have everything, and as long as these disparities remain, as long as these distances remain between people and forces, I think we'll be in a perpetual state of upheaval.”

— Harry Belafonte

“If I've impacted on one heart, one mind, one soul, and brought to that individual a greater truth than that individual came into a relationship with me having, then I would say that I have been successful.”

— Harry Belafonte

“I don't find inspiration on Wall Street. I don't find that in Beverly Hills. I don't find that in places where opportunity resides unbridled, and I think the real creative energy and the real juice is in where people are caught, in the economic abyss.”

— Harry Belafonte

“Since I have escaped the harshness of the economic bounds of poverty, I have stayed very connected to it spiritually. I reside and live and go and socialize and exist among those who suffer daily from the relationship that they have to poverty, Black men and women who are incarcerated. Actually, all people who are incarcerated, not just Black.”

— Harry Belafonte

No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution.

— Harry Belafonte

I would hope with all my heart, that Jay Z not take personally what was said ... I would like to take this opportunity to say to Jay Z and Beyonce: I'm wide open, my heart is filled with nothing but hope and the promise that we can sit and have a one-on-one to understand each other.

— Harry Belafonte

“I am who I am despite what America has put before me. I am who I am despite the obstacles that we have all faced based upon race and based upon social and spiritual humiliation.”

— Harry Belafonte

“We Have Got To Bring Corporate America To Its Knees”

— Harry Belafonte

“When I go across the country, whether it's Albuquerque, New Mexico, whether it's Birmingham, Alabama or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there are always forces at play that I choose to relate to and extract inspiration from, and as long as they stay committed to the struggle against poverty, I find a role for myself.”

— Harry Belafonte

“When I was 40 and looking at 60, it seemed like a thousand miles away. But 62 feels like a week and a half away from 80. I must now get on with those things I always talked about doing but put off.”

— Harry Belafonte

“We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended.”

— Harry Belafonte

“Through electing officials that will protect the Constitution and commit themselves to the rights of the people and the health of the nation, we will be able to ensure that no group of ideologues and no private sector institution can coopt our rights, take us into senseless wars and steal the nation from its people.”

— Harry Belafonte

“In poor environment, I find great inspiration. Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression.”

— Harry Belafonte

“My formative years, until I was 12, was all shaped by Jamaican culture, by that economy, by the people in my family, who are agriculturalists, who were plantation workers, who harvested those crops and took them down to the boats run by the United Food Company, to load those ships at night, hence all the songs that I sing that come from that environment.”

— Harry Belafonte

The USA has more people in prison that any other country, including countries with much larger populations. 13% of the population is black but 80% of the people in prison are black, mostly for soft crimes.

— Harry Belafonte

“Children who have lost parents to HIV/AIDS are not only just as deserving of an education as any other children, but they may need that education even more. Being part of a school environment will prepare them for the future, while helping to remove the stigma and discrimination unfortunately associated with AIDS.”

— Harry Belafonte

“Carmen Jones was the first all-Negro film that became a great box-office success. It established the fact that pictures with Negro artists, pictures dealing with the folklore of Negro life, were commercially feasible. This was a sign of growth that had occurred in the United States and throughout the world.”

— Harry Belafonte

Why are we mute? Where are our leaders, our legislators? Where is the church?

— Harry Belafonte

“To really know what progress we're making for children, we have to know how many children we have to begin with. The simple act of counting is an expression of a country's intent to take care of its people.”

— Harry Belafonte

“I like Colin Powell, I like his West Indian background, I like his intellect, I like a lot of things that he does and his style. What is at fault here is a policy that's taking this country to hell,”

— Harry Belafonte

“I grew up in a school system ... where nobody understood the meaning of learning disorder. In the West Indies, I was constantly being physically abused because the whipping of students was permitted.”

— Harry Belafonte

The only thing left for Barack Obama to do is to work like a third world dictator and just put all these guys in jail.

— Harry Belafonte

“Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.”

— Harry Belafonte

“I think that they [Bush Administration] are men who are possessed of evil.”

— Harry Belafonte

I am a man who perceives life in a certain way, a man who rejects things that defecate on humankind, who rejects anything that will not give people room for dissent.

— Harry Belafonte

Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.

— Harry Belafonte

“I don't think that (U.S. President) George Bush ... is a man of honor,”

— Harry Belafonte

“More than once my mother would point out: Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.”

— Harry Belafonte

The sham engineers of the music industry, who steer the wheels of public opinion, are driving the good features of calypso into the ground. I shudder to think what these greedy men will eventually do to this true art form.

— Harry Belafonte

“Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value. [If] a black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants, they all have to be treated as they are being treated.”

— Harry Belafonte

“I didn't like The Wiz and it wasn't because black people were doing it. I didn't like The Wiz because it was a badly made movie off a classic. Why are you remaking something unless you have something better in mind?”

— Harry Belafonte

Anti-democracy ... is a virus that exists, and pro-democracy is the antibody to that virus, and I think we have to become vigilant, and we have to stay on top of the issues of democracy and freedom.

— Harry Belafonte

“The Catholic Church had strict racial attitudes and intolerance for anybody who was not Catholic. When I look at a lot of Black ministers and what went on in the Black church, I was more caught up with those who were in Cadillacs and shiny suits than I was with those who were Kingian in their style.”

— Harry Belafonte

“I come from a sense of struggle, a sense of using the instruments that were given to me to manipulate the environment in which I found myself, and joined up with those who are equally as skillful at manipulating that environment, as was I.”

— Harry Belafonte

I'm very familiar with poverty. I find it easy to be with, whether I'm in America or in Africa or in Asia. Wherever I go and find the environment of those who are living in poverty and resisting poverty is a great in which I have great comfort.

— Harry Belafonte

“Poverty continues to exist. Its appearance seems to be relentless in evidencing itself not only to all the things we experience here in America, but certainly what we see globally. And I don't see anywhere any philosophical analysis that suggests we know how to get out of this.”

— Harry Belafonte

“When I went to Japan I sang in Japanese; when I went to Greece I sang in Greek. When I went to Spain, I sang in Spanish. I couldn't speak it very well, but I sang, I was beautiful in singing it. These things just constantly attracted people to the uniqueness of who I was and the way in which I performed.”

— Harry Belafonte

I think America offers a dream that cannot be fulfilled as easily anywhere else in the world as it could be fulfilled here. Although oppression was common to all of us, those styles of oppression gave us the opportunity to see the world in dimensions we didn't quite see growing up in any one place.

— Harry Belafonte

“Turning against the church I also had to turn against a lot of the teachings of people in my family who were very much of the church and caught in it, and every time I turned to find where resides the good in the church, all I saw was the demonic, the Lucifer of the journey.”

— Harry Belafonte