Quotes from Gil Scott-Heron

I was born in Chicago, but I was raised in a town called Jackson, Tennessee. And a lot of these changes that were necessary and talked about it as important have been made, like, people go to school where they want to go. They work for equal pay, they work for - they can go school and have an equal shot at a job.

I learnt early on that your audience take the songs in the way they want to rather than the way you might want them too.

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.

You see, revolution sounds like something that happens, like turning on the light switch, but actually it's moving a large obstacle, and a lot of folks' efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine.

I have a novel that I can write. It's about three soldiers from Somalia. Some babies have been disappearing up on 144th Street, and I speculate later on what happened to them and how they might have been got back. These guys are dead, all three, and they have a chance in the afterlife to do something they should have done when they were alive.

If you're supposed to be doing something, the spirits will come and help you. They have helped me out with lines I shouldn't have known, chords I shouldn't have known. Every once in a while I get lines from somewhere, and I think, I better write this down.

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 scagand skip out for beer during commercial breaks.The revolution will not be televised.

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'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.

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.

You have to learn and keep learning.

Every once in a while, you live long enough to get the respect that people didn't want to give while you were trying to become a senior citizen.

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

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

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.

You never cared enough to be Black

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, Will not be televised, will not be televised. The revolution will not be re-run, brothers. The revolution will be live.

The revolution will not be televised

The revolution that goes on in your head, nobody will ever see that.

It may be crazy, but I'm the closest thing I have to a voice of reason.

home is where the hated is

Words are important for the mind, but the notes are for the soul.

Stand as far away from me as you can And ask me why Hang on to your rosary beads Close your eyes to watch me die You keep saying kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it God, but did you ever try To turn your sick soul inside out So that the world So that the world Can watch you die

When it comes to people's safety, money wins out every time