“You hear entertainers all the time, saying, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for this, I’d do it for free.’ When’s the last time you ever heard a business person say, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I’d do it for free?’”

Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge.

When I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, ‘I’ve been gypped,’ or, ‘He welshed on the deal.’

We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn’t it either. I’m going to be an American Citizen. First-class.

Coconut milk is the only thing on this planet that comes identically to mother’s milk.

If all you can do is judge a person by their appearance because you don’t have the spirit to judge someone from within, you’re in trouble.

I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.

I personally would say that the quickest way to wipe out a group of people is to put them on a soul food diet.

My belief is, you know, certain things have to be explained that’s never been explained.

Revolution ain’t nothing but an extent of evolution; Evolution is a fact of nature.

No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That’s already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.

Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

I used to get letters saying, ‘I didn’t know black children and white children were the same.’

Makes you wonder. When I left St. Louis, I was making five dollars a night. Now I’m getting $5,000 a week — for saying the same things out loud I used to say under my breath.

You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We’re the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X.

The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.

They told me there was very little racial prejudice in Hawaii. Like a woman is just a little bit pregnant.

Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.

Since I started my career very early, I have gone through the rigmarole of experiencing successes and failures.

A performer learns with experience and with age. I did not know the future when I left home and started out to begin my career: I started qawaali; then I met Peter Gabriel and was exposed to a lot of new ideas.

I find it difficult enough as it is to keep some kind of normality in my life. I enjoy this experience, but I don’t know where I’m going to take my career.

Any article’s good. Long as it’s publicity, I think that’s all that matters. I think it’s advancement for my career.

From a very early age, I made my decisions based on careers that I admire. The one thing that all the actresses I love have in common is that they have diversity in their careers.

You know, a lot of girls go out with me just to further their careers…damn anthropologists.

Planning a career, I always find a tricky thing, because I don’t have much of a plan, really.