Gil Scott-Heron Quotations

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.

Your life has to consist of more than 'Black people should unite.' You hope they do, but not twenty-four hours a day.

Every show that sells out is like a hero's welcome for me.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.

The revolution that takes place in your head, nobody will ever see that.

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.

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 know what has made me the happiest I've ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing.

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.

My songs were always about the tone of voice rather than the words.

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 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.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

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.

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.

I am honestly not sure how capable I am of love. And I'm not sure why.

If you aren't having no fun, die, because you're running a worthless program, far as I'm concerned.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

I don't mind being criticized. I enjoy being criticized personally, not by rumor.

Our accomplishments show what kind of people we are.

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.

I was a piano player before I was a poet.

I was one of the first three black students to go to an all-white school in Tennessee.

You should be able to do anything you can afford as an adult.

I found my grandmother dead. It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn't stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis, and I'm done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it.

As for money - when I have it, it's great. When I don't, I go get some. I've been a dishwasher, a gardener, a cleaner.

Schedule? I have no schedule. There is no hurry. I work when I want to.

Womenfolk raised me and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home

I tour more than I need to, more than is good for you. But it's my favorite part of music. I much prefer it to studio work.

Well, I grew up on the blues, man!

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.

I thought that some of my best records was when there wasn't a lot of work being done on it, like 'Winter in America' and 'Secrets' and when there weren't a whole lot of people in the studios.

You never cared enough to be Black

I think a whole lot of stuff gets by people - I could name half a dozen groups that do songs that are openly supportive of experimentation with drugs, nobody ever said anything to them.

I don't think people in power have the potential to do anything like that to me. I feel as though as long as our music is available, folks are going to hear it.

I don't suspect that in many instances the artists who are dedicated in that fashion to the progress of that community are as well protected by the community as might be necessary.

I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community.

We understand what the difference is between what we understand and what the community understands about what we're doing because they have supported us long enough for me to stay out here, while other people who are doing other things have not. A lot of people have trouble pinning down what it is we do and how. But we don't have any trouble with that. As long as that's their problem, it's their problem.

You can have a poem like "B-Movie" and sum up thirty conversations that people have had on the subject, but I wrote it down, and other people didn't.

A lot of folks are so busy trying to get their groceries together that they don't have time to do research. I have time. Maybe that's the main difference.

I cannot afford to watch Fox News.

The truth is that in this country you here you're more likely to be harassed, hurt, or killed if you're a minister speaking about progress for Black people than if you are a sure enough revolutionary.

The revolution will not be televised.

I find it not just strange but almost ridiculous that people could take a song like the one I was doing and interpret it is corroding anything. Folks have the feeling that oftentimes if you don't talk about something it will go away.

I think that the more people who speak out, and say things and take stands on positions that will better our community, the better off each and every other individual artist or otherwise, will be.

The way you get to know yourself is by the expression on other people's faces.

You have to learn and keep learning.

I don't see any independent position that I'm in; it's rather inter-dependent.

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

Angel dust won't go away. Somefolks who were smoking it were going away.

I try not to take people who haven't really thought out what they're doing too seriously. I try not to let them get in the way of what I feel I need to do.

Oftentimes, the way it seems to be is that our artists in particular point themselves out as spokesmen for a certain constituency in a community, and thereby place themselves in that vulnerable position.

When we were doing the "Angel Dust" thing we got information from the National Institute of Drug Abuse because we knew that if we went out and said something about angel dust people were going to ask questions about it and we wanted to be sure we had all the information to deal with it when those questions came up. So it's all a question of being as prepared as possible out front, so that if you are going to deal with information it'll be correct. A lot of people won't check it out but some people will.

If we meet somebody who has never made a mistake, lets help them start a religion. Until then, were just going to meet other humans and help to make each other better.

The revolution will be no re-run brothers, The revolution will be live.

America .. the international Jekyll and Hyde ... the land of a thousand disguises, sneaks up on you but rarely surprises

A good poet feels what his community feels. Like if you stub your toe, the rest of your body hurts.

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

Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.

Paul Robeson once said that the artist has the responsibility to either help liberate the community or further oppress it. And I think that when Eldridge Cleaver wrote it down it was interpreted as his, but there's a history of people saying things of that nature and meaning it. And what I do is in that tradition, in that mode.

You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life.

I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation.

The first revolution is when you change your mind

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.