Miriam Makeba

“In the mind, in the heart, I was always home. I always imagined, really, going back home.”

― Miriam Makeba

 

“It was hard to be away from home, but I am glad that I am home now.”

― Miriam Makeba

 

“And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it’s third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it’s much more polite.”

― Miriam Makeba

 

“Which goes to show you, you can make all the laws you want, but you cannot change people’s ways. If you must change them, you have to understand that it will take a long time.”

― Miriam Makeba

 

“It is very much the theme of our President, President Thabo Mbeki, whose passion is for Africa to work together, and for Africans to get up and do things for us. We are trying as women to do things for ourselves.”

― Miriam Makeba

 

Age is getting to know all the ways the world turns, so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want, you can at least, get out of the way so you won’t get run over”

― Miriam Makeba

 

“Age is…wisdom, if one has lived one’s life properly.”

― Miriam Makeba

 

“I look at a stream and I see myself: a native South African, flowing irresistibly over hard obstacles until they become smooth and, one day, disappear — flowing from an origin that has been forgotten toward an end that will never be.”

― Miriam Makeba

 

“People in the United States still have a ‘Tarzan’ movie view of Africa. That’s because in the movies all you see are jungles and animals . . . We [too] watch television and listen to the radio and go to dances and fall in love.”

― Miriam Makeba