Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Harry Belafonte
Age: 97
Born: 1927
Born: March 1
Actor
Peace Activist
Recording Artist
Singer
Songwriter
Television Actor
Harlem
New York
King of Calypso
Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.
Planets
Wreck
Places
Wrecks
Wall
Walls
Policy
Oppression
Written
Africa
American
Foreign
Made
Everywhere
Always
Planet

More quotes by Harry Belafonte

Image
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
Image
Where is the raised voice of black America? Why are we mute?
Harry Belafonte
Image
You can cage the singer but not the song.
Harry Belafonte
Image
Do not submit. It is extremely critical that repression be met full head-on and that it be resisted with every fiber in our being. There is just absolutely no compromise that can be made with it.
Harry Belafonte
Image
I think being born in America and growing up exclusively within the American boundaries of race and race oppression is a very different experience for those of us who grew up under the boundaries of race and race experience in the Caribbean or for those who grew up in Africa.
Harry Belafonte
Image
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
Image
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
Image
More than once my mother would point out: Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.
Harry Belafonte
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I delighted in the music of Africa, the earliest of the slave plantation songs, the transformation into Christianity and all that Christianity brought to the lives of the Africans who were forced to come to America.
Harry Belafonte
Image
We [Americans] move about the world arrogantly, calling wars when we want, overthrowing governments when we want. There is a price to be paid for it -- look at 9/11. [That] wasn't just bin Laden. Bin Laden didn't come from the abstract. He came from somewhere, and if you look where ... you'll see America's hand of villainy.
Harry Belafonte
Image
Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.
Harry Belafonte
Image
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
Image
As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on.
Harry Belafonte
Image
Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.
Harry Belafonte
Image
From the point of view of the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, the wretched of the Earth... there will never be peace until their condition has been alleviated and until their humanity is in full bloom.
Harry Belafonte
Image
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
Image
I'm called a folk singer, and I'm not too sure about that. I went about my life approaching music not from the point of view of a singer, but from the point of view of an actor. That's how I first started to sing.
Harry Belafonte
Image
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