Cathy Freeman Quotes

Every day, every year, and for every graduating class, there is a choice to be made, the same option for all grown-ups to make: to be one of three types of Americans — those who embrace liberty for all, those who won’t, or those who are indifferent — and only the first do the work of creating a more perfect union.

[Belafonte]'d take me to perform for Martin Luther King's cause. But when they were marching I did not take part, because I was not a citizen

For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all.

[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.

They were walking side by side, but each was alone.

America was changing. I had a feeling of destiny and I was riding the changes... My consciousness was beginning to change, too, change and stretch.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing — not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity.

I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.

I have never thought there was much to be said in favor of dragging on long after all one's friends were dead.

Jail is big business, believe me. I'm in jail, I see the big business. You can feed a whole town off one jail. This jail is in the middle of a town that feeds everybody. Everybody works here, this is the main income. So if there were no criminals, nobody would work.

You just mentioned Bob Marley —  I can remember when I was in college, listening — and not agreeing with his whole philosophy necessarily, but raising my awareness of how people outside of our country were thinking about the struggles for jobs and dignity, and freedom.

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

I wasn’t astonished by Europe and I was never that impressed by the speed and grandeur of modern America

From the time they turned one they were tossed from the balconies of the kitchens, first with life preserves so they would lose their fear of the water, and then without life preservers so they would lose their respect for death.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.