Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis. Amiri Baraka More Quotes by Amiri Baraka More Quotes From Amiri Baraka The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it. Amiri Baraka roles artist people A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom. Amiri Baraka freedom justice men There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you Amiri Baraka fighting justice america The word “art” is something the West has never understood. Art is supposed to be a part of a community. Like, scholars are supposed to be a part of a community... Art is to decorate people’s houses, their skin, their clothes, to make them expand their minds, and it’s supposed to be right in the community, where they can have it when they want it... It’s supposed to be as essential as a grocery store... that’s the only way art can function naturally. Amiri Baraka clothes people art The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is … political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act. Amiri Baraka political claims art The torture of being the unseen object, and the constantly observed subject. Amiri Baraka torture unseen pain Art is whatever makes you proud to be human. Amiri Baraka art-is proud art My responsibility is to truth and beauty. Amiri Baraka truth-and-beauty responsibility If you are black, the only roads into the mainland of American life are through subservience, cowardice, and loss of manhood. These are the white man's roads. Amiri Baraka white-man loss men I'd say I'm a revolutionary optimist. I believe that the good guys -the people- are going to win. Amiri Baraka winning believe people There is no depth to education without art. Amiri Baraka depth art In America, black is a country. Amiri Baraka racism country america All thinking people oppose terrorism both domestic & international but one should not be used to cover the other Amiri Baraka terrorism people thinking The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. Amiri Baraka blue reality moving Thought is more important than art....To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is. Amiri Baraka learning understanding art I am inside someone Amiri Baraka smell hate eye from the slave ship to the citizenship we faced a lot of bullship Amiri Baraka citizenship slave-ships ships When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone. Amiri Baraka white sweet people The African, because of the violent differences between what was native and what he was forced to in slavery, developed some of the most complex and complicated ideas about the world imaginable. Amiri Baraka differences world ideas Hope is delicate suffering. Amiri Baraka delicate suffering hope
