In the gun game, we are the most hunted. The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children.
Harry BelafonteRead
Anti-democracy...is a virus that exists, and pro-democracy is the antibody to that virus, and I think we have to become vigilant, and we have to stay on top of the issues of democracy and freedom.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that pro-democracy efforts are essential to combat anti-democratic forces, likening them to a virus and an antibody.
Harry Belafonte highlights the ongoing struggle for democracy by comparing anti-democracy to a virus that threatens societal health. He emphasizes the need for vigilance and proactive engagement in defending democratic values and freedoms, which are essential for a healthy society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of civic engagement in a democratic society.
In the gun game, we are the most hunted. The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children.
Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.
You can cage the singer but not the song.
I've always been supportive of the right of Israel as a state, and I've always fought against anti-Semitism, even in my own community.
Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.
Children who have lost parents to HIV/AIDS are not only just as deserving of an education as any other children, but they may need that education even more. Being part of a school environment will prepare them for the future, while helping to remove the stigma and discrimination unfortunately associated with AIDS.
What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.
To go beyond samsara and nirvana, we will need _x000D_ the two wings of emptiness and compassion. _x000D_ From now on, let us use these two wings _x000D_ to fly fearlessly into the sky of the life to come.
Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.
Life's unfairness is not irrevocable; we can help balance the scales for others, if not always for ourselves.
The fact that so many people choose to live in ways that narrow the community of fate to a very limited set of others and to define the rest as threatening to their way of life and values is deeply worrying because this contemporary form of tribalism, and the ideologies that support it, enable them to deny complex and more crosscutting mutual interdependencies-local, national, and international-and to elude their own role in creating long-term threats to their own wellbeing and that of others.
You cannot really have the world and hold on to it. It is all too temporary and the more you try to hold on to it, the more it actually holds you. By contrast, the more you hold on to the true and the good, the more you are free to really live.
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