Miriam Makeba Quotes

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.

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.

I feel I am privileged to express a hope. The hope is this: that we shall have peace throughout the world: that we shall abolish wars, and settle all international differences at the conference table: that we shall abolish all atom and hydrogen bombs, before they abolish us first.

...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.

This is a story of a period between two World Wars — an interim in which insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nose dive, and humanity was kicked around somewhat.

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

In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.

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.