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As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on.

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.
Matter
Feeds
Oppression
Compromise
Fact
Facts

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You can cage the singer but not the song.
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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
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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.
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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.
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I became an anti-fascist, and the more I saw what was happening to the peoples of Europe, the Jews, the more I saw the deep cruelty and inhumanity of that system and its philosophy of white supremacy.
Harry Belafonte
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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
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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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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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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
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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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Terrorism is in many, many ways the final utterance of voices unheard.
Harry Belafonte
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Wherever I found resistance to oppression, whether in Africa, in Latin America, certainly here in America in the South, I joined that resistance. I took part in the labor movement, in social movements, in the church community. I felt that it was the honorable thing to do and still do.
Harry Belafonte
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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
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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
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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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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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Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.
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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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
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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