Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.

I've learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed... I have sung my songs all over the world and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs as their own.

I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth.

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom

Freedom is a hard-bought thing and millions are in chains, but they strain toward the new day drawing near.

With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.

We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.