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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

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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.
Point
Sing
Actors
View
Music
Actor
Firsts
Views
Approaching
First
Started
Folk
Life
Went
Singer
Called
Singers
Sure
Folks

More quotes by Harry Belafonte

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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
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Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.
Harry Belafonte
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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
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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
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Why are we mute? Where are our leaders, our legislators? Where is the church?
Harry Belafonte
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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
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John say's it's James who started first, James tells the story in reverse. I drag my belt from off me waist, you should have heard dem screaming round de place.
Harry Belafonte
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This generosity that has been offered to the United States says very much about the Venezuelan spirit.
Harry Belafonte
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Although we had a lot of villainy here in America, Adolf Hitler was certainly the most visible illustration of what would happen if fascism went unchallenged.
Harry Belafonte
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The human spirit is resilient and truth - no matter how long you abuse it and how long you try to crush it - will, as Dr. King would say, rise up again, and in the final analysis will prevail.
Harry Belafonte
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These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country.
Harry Belafonte
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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More than once my mother would point out: Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.
Harry Belafonte
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Without compromise repression would be defeated. Just as some cancers feed on hormones, compromise becomes the hormone of oppression.
Harry Belafonte
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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