Quotes About African Roots

#1. Some black people want to get in touch with their African roots. But then you got some black people that just don't give a damn. You tell them, 'Hey, I just got back from the motherland.' They're like, 'Where'd you go - Detroit? Did you see The Temptations?'

Wanda Sykes

#2. My African roots made me what I am today. They're the reason I exist at all.

Junot Diaz

#3. Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea.

Mick Taylor

#4. Congolese rumba was so huge in Africa that everybody was inspired by it. But my African roots brought me this music. In every African family, parties in Brussels, we used to listen to this kind of music. And salsa music as well.

Stromae

#5. It is a cultural tradition that makes New Orleans what it is. It also represents the roots of American music and an important part of the African-American community in New Orleans. It unites people in some of the poorer neighborhoods of the city. It is absolutely critical to continue.

Bill Taylor

#6. Reason dies collapsing under its own load.

Bill Mallonee

#7. There were times when i felt in a slump or lonely but i never thought of giving up

Sandara Park

#8. Nobody's told me anything to date that I've been completely reviled by.

Chuck Palahniuk

#9. I daresay some would never get their eyes opened if it were not for a violent shock from the consequences of their own actions

George Eliot

#10. My own personal theory is that all popular music, in whatever form it is, to me, it all comes from Africa. Whether it's filtered through America or whatever - African-American. But I still think there's something in that roots music that's very, very African, and I think that's what unites people.

Paul Weller

#11. If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it's good. I'm not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don't cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don't stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you'll never see it again.

Tom Waits

#12. My roots are African. The birds I remember, the fruits I ate, the trees I climbed, they're African.

Teresa Heinz

#13. If you ain't laughing, you ain't living, baby.

Carlos Mencia

#14. When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.

Anna Deavere Smith

#15. The African specialist Nahid Toubia puts it plain [when speaking of female genital mutilation]: In a man it would range from amoutation of most of the penis, to removal of all the penis, its roots of soft tissue and part of the scrotal skin.

Eve Ensler

#16. I don't feel any pressure at all to go along with anybody. I feel pressure to do the right thing for U.S. markets and U.S. investors.

Mary Schapiro

#17. I'm a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.

Lee Child

#18. The prime minister has chosen to acknowledge publicly the sovereignty of God and the claim of God on her life. Hers is the challenge to live up to that claim.

Philip Robinson

#19. Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

Henri Matisse

#20. My African heritage is a part of reggae music roots, and the concept is that the album, 'Revelation Part 1: The Root of Life' is a tribute to roots reggae music. The fruit is what blossoms into different colors and shades, but the root has to stand predominant.

Stephen Marley

#21. The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from ... the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.

Duke Ellington

#22. A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

Quincy Jones

#23. Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.

Henry Louis Gates

#24. Popular culture - above all rock 'n' roll, with its African-American R & B roots - did far more to radicalize us than did any feminist leader.

Camille Paglia

#25. Ethiopia always has a special place in my imagination and the prospect of visiting Ethiopia attracted me more strongly than a trip to France, England, and America combined. I felt I would be visiting my own genesis, unearthing the roots of what made me an African.

Nelson Mandela

#26. Our cultural roots are the most ancient in the world. The spiritual concepts of our Ancestors gave birth to religious thought African people believe in the oneness of the African family through sacred time, which unites the past, the present and the future. Our Ancestors live with us.

Marimba Ani

#27. I think I'd take a human butler over a robot one.

Tom Felton

#28. The reason why Botswana has done very well is because it's the only black African country which went back to its roots and built upon its own indigenous institutions.

George Ayittey

#29. When I first met Big, we were both at a 'Bad Boy' family photo shoot. I was kind of familiar with the name Biggie Smalls, but I really wasn't that much into hip-hop at the time, so I really didn't know that was him. He said he didn't even know I was an artist on 'Bad Boy.'

Faith Evans

#30. There are a lot of chapters to the banjo's history. Part of it are the roots in Africa, where it's a more primitive instrument. Then it comes to the United States where it morphs into the slave music that they created here, which was very African in origin.

Bela Fleck

#31. Life is God's gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.

A.R. Bernard

#32. I've had some Democrat African-American leaders tell me they're really not all that comfortable with Obama as the lead at the MLK festivities 'cause he's not down for the struggle. He does not have that in his roots.

Rush Limbaugh