I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman without a single drop of bad blood – certainly not German blood.

I’m the proof – you can’t throw away tradition.

I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

It doesn’t sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

When you’re all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

I feel Anglo-American.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

In this country, it doesn’t make any difference where you were born. It doesn’t make any difference who your parents were. It doesn’t make any difference if, like me, you couldn’t even speak English until you were in your twenties.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

I am the son of a freedom fighter, and a son of a freedom fighter automatically imbibes the value of democracy.

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families – second families, perhaps I should say.

Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

We can have no ’50-50′ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.

Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.

I have dual citizenship, it just so happens I live in America.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

My last name is originally Irish. I’m not exactly sure whereabouts it’s from, but I’ve got family branches that were traced back there.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

The Iraqis have become invested in their nationhood.