"Learning without piety produces a proud device; piety without learning produces a useless one."

“We must ask why apparently general musical abilities should be restricted to a chosen few in societies supposed to be culturally more advanced. Does cultural development represent a real advance in human sensitivity, or is it chiefly a diversion for elites and a weapon of class exploitation?”

Source : John Blacking (1974). “How Musical is Man?”, p.4, University of Washington Press

“The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.”

“in a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection ...”

“When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. . . . When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.”

“The capture of Saddam Hussein has proven to the bad ones, to the guilty ones, to the sinful ones that they cannot run forever. Sooner or later, the other criminals will also be found from their hideouts.”

Source : "Afganistan's Hamid Karzai". Interview with Tom Brokaw, www.nbcnews.com. December 15, 2003.

“I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music. There is only good music and bad music.”

“We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”

“Jesus, Food of strong souls, strengthen me, purify me, make me godlike”