Quotes from Michael Franti

Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

Life is too short to make just one decision, Music's too loud for just one station, Love is too big for just one nation, AND GOD IS TOO BIG FOR JUST ONE RELIGION...

God is too big for just one religion.

San Francisco has always been a haven for misfits and weirdos. I'm both of those, which is why I came here.

I went to Iraq because I wanted to see what one year of occupation had done to Iraqi society, and I went to the West Bank and Gaza Strip because I wanted to see what three generations of occupation had done to Palestinian society. I found a lot more hopelessness and despair in Palestine.

Everyone deserves music.

The way the music comes to you starts to affect how you listen to music. When you're a kid, it's 'Does it rock? Does it make me feel good? Does it make me tap my feet? Does it make me go to sleep?'

I could be really sad and I start to cry; I feel alive then. I could be at a concert and I throw my hands up in the air and I feel elation; I feel alive then.

I have a passion to make a difference in the world. And that difference can be just making the fans at my show leave with a smile on their face and feeling uplifted.

The more I see, the less I know.

We have a saying in my house, my kids and my girlfriend. We say, 'Be your best for the greater good, and rock out wherever you are.'

It doesn't matter if you're black, white, gay, straight, come from different countries, different language... every single person is significant and is meaningful.

We would play songs live on stage, and then we'd watch their reaction we were receiving immediately, if people were dancing and singing along. If they weren't, then we'd go into the dressing rooms of the different NBA teams that we were playing in their arenas, and we'd change the songs right there.

I think that fear comes about when there's things in the world that we want to change, things we're scared or angry about, and we can't change them, and so we become fearful; we develop anxiety.

Recording in Jamaica is like nothing else. The studios are always closed in America. But in Jamaica, the studio doors are wide open, and there's music blasting out in the street. You can see the reaction of people immediately.

I eat bags and bags of cashews. I've got them in the kitchen, and about ten feet away I've got another bowl on the kitchen table. In my backpack, I've always got a bag of cashews. I started eating them in the airports because that's the one food that you can find in every airport that's actually nutritious.

Bonnaroo has kind of become the granddaddy of all American festivals. The thing I love about it most is that it wasn't born out of picking the top ten bands off the Billboard chart and creating a festival around it.

All the freaky people make the beauty of the world.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just to stay human.

History shows that Americans believe in doing the right thing.

To sit back and say, 'Oh, we're going to let the government do whatever they want, right or wrong,' is giving up.

You get everything you could have ever wished for if you're willing to give that eternal bliss away to somebody else, to give it back.

You learn a lot when you're barefoot. The first thing is every step you take is different.

After a show, I'll get the 16-year-old white kid whose lip is pierced, his head is shaved and his parents hate him, and the young gangster from the screwed-up 'hood, and they say that now they realize there's someone out there who thinks like they do.