Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It’s the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

I ain’t never called nobody no redskin. I’ve never been mad, like, ‚Get out of this restaurant, you redskin.‘

There are thousands of ways to take action. For example, plant trees, pick up litter, join an organisation or movement that makes a difference and especially try to influence adults and put pressure on people in power.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

I don’t think President Trump is a racist.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.

Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death.

The word ‚racism‘ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything – and demanding evidence makes you a ‚racist.‘

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

You know what should be banned? Stuff that’s whack. The world is controversial. The world is classist. The world is racist.

Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.

Trump just looks stupid trying to appeal to blacks and Latinos.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

I love the women’s movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

So people are talking about revolution. What a revolution it would be to have a woman president.

The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‚n‘ word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren’t pretty or they weren’t rich or they weren’t clever.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

Rhyme patterns are nothing without meanings to the words. A lot of rappers can do those flows, but the raps aren’t really about anything – which is cool sometimes, but to have the flow and the message is one of my favorite things.

The white man is destroying the world.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

There are a number of women who have brought about immense change in society.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you’re always going to find a hip-hop tape; that’s all I buy, that’s all I live, that’s all I listen to, that’s all I love.

I don’t think the Tea Party people are racist, except maybe a tiny portion of them. But there has been a deliberate effort – again, referring to Fox Broadcasting – to inject the race issue into it. They have actually called Obama a racist on television.

After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

Anti-Semitism is real in this country.

There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.