Music From African Americans Quotes & Sayings

Maybe it's a good idea," said Kathy.

"Why is that?"

"Well - you have a British sensibility."

"What does that mean?"

"I just mean people over there might like it." She gestured in the direction of England. — Charlie Close

We simply must look beyond partisan goals and find common ground as Americans. It is imperative that the Members of Congress recognize that partisanship will not serve the American people. — Michael Crapo

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another. — Charles Spurgeon

From politics and business to music and food to culture, African-Americans have helped to shape our state's colourful past and its future. — Mary Landrieu

And I like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today-jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock and roll, hip hop and on and on- is derived from the blues. — Kurt Vonnegut

Leaders are active instead of reactive, shaping ideas instead of responding to them. Leaders adopt a personal and active attitude toward goals. The influence a leader exerts in altering moods, evoking images and expectations, and in establishing specific desires and objectives determines the direction an organization takes. The net result of this influence is to change the way people think about what is desirable, possible, and necessary. In other words, leaders are visionaries and managers operate within those established visions. — Abraham Zaleznik

A change of work is a good rest for the mind if you're constantly focused on writing. I like to work with timber and be creative on that side sometimes as well. — Angus Stone

Men want a challenge, but they want a challenge they can win. — Whitney Gaskell

I always tell my partners that our job is to fund all the companies we can that can be worth $10 billion or more. That's such a difficult constraint, we can't have any other constraints. — Sam Altman

Ray Charles' revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was. — Diane Watson

In the '80s, Ronald Reagan inspired me to become politicized, because I grew up in that era when everything I cared about was under attack. — Michael Franti

And there were the warm spaces in the music I loved the most, openings through which I could enter and lay my burdens down. There, behind the groove and riding on the melody, I was complete and free. — Rashod Ollison

In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries
television, radio, video, music. Like all Americans, African Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort. These images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values
love, care, service to others
handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward of self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America. — Cornel West

He worked in Interim Reports, before being upgraded to Annual Reports. — Shirley Hazzard

When it comes to African Americans and African American actors, Hollywood has always felt that if you can make us laugh, that's fine, but we don't need to see you do a 'Schindler's List,' where there's no jokes or music or comedic through-line. — Hill Harper

Though many strive to hide their human libidinousness from themselves and each other, being a force of nature, it breaks through. Lots of uptight, proper Americans were scandalized by the way Elvis moved his hips when he sang "rock and roll." But how many realized what the phrase rock and roll meant? Cultural historian Michael Ventura, investigating the roots of African-American music, found that rock 'n' roll was a term that originated in the juke joints of the South. Long in use by the time Elvis appeared, Ventura explains the phrase "hadn't meant the name of a music, it meant 'to fuck.' 'Rock,' by itself, has pretty much meant that, in those circles, since the twenties at least." By the mid-1950s, when the phrase was becoming widely used in mainstream culture, Ventura says the disc jockeys "either didn't know what they were saying or were too sly to admit what they knew. — Christopher Ryan

If you inquire into the hurt, you'll know what you're experiencing is love. — Duncan Trussell

Fear is taught by grown up men and beasts to their young. Once we learn to be afraid, we rarely shake off the habit, and I believe our fear frightens other beasts causing them to attack us. — Dhan Gopal Mukerji

We know that Seattle is mentioned frequently ... a computer was found in Afghanistan showing pictures of Seattle-area landmarks. So we are in constant contact with the FBI and with other federal authorities, — Greg Nickels

The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption - a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible. — Thomas Jefferson

I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans - the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today. — Willie Nelson