Gil Scott-Heron Quotes

The first revolution is when you change your mind

Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.

You will not be able to stay home, brother./You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out./You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,/Skip out for beer during commercials,/Because the revolution will not be televised.

I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation.

America .. the international Jekyll and Hyde ... the land of a thousand disguises, sneaks up on you but rarely surprises

Music has the power to make me feel good like nothing else does. It gives me some peace for a while. Takes me back to who I really am.

Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die.

I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.

The revolution that takes place in your head, nobody will ever see that.

If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.

A good poet feels what his community feels. Like if you stub your toe, the rest of your body hurts.

The revolution will be no re-run brothers, The revolution will be live.

If we meet somebody who has never made a mistake, lets help them start a religion. Until then, were just going to meet other humans and help to make each other better.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

All the dreams you show up in are not your own.

I don't mind being criticized. I enjoy being criticized personally, not by rumor.

I try not to take people who haven't really thought out what they're doing too seriously. I try not to let them get in the way of what I feel I need to do.

You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expression on other people's faces.

Everything that's bad for you catches on too quickly in America, because that's the easiest thing to get people to invest in, the pursuits that are easy and destructive, the ones that bring out the least positive aspects of people.

I think that the more people who speak out, and say things and take stands on positions that will better our community, the better off each and every other individual artist or otherwise, will be.

Paul Robeson once said that the artist has the responsibility to either help liberate the community or further oppress it. And I think that when Eldridge Cleaver wrote it down it was interpreted as his, but there's a history of people saying things of that nature and meaning it. And what I do is in that tradition, in that mode.

My songs were always about the tone of voice rather than the words.

If you aren't having no fun, die, because you're running a worthless program, far as I'm concerned.