SOME WISE QUOTES

If you try to put social and cultural development ahead of economic development, it

doesn't work. You have to do it all together.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence
Nothing is impossible; the word itself says 'I'm possible'!
Never try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.
We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody

else.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
Positive anything is better than negative nothing.
Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going

Caged Bird
The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird
sings of freedom
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
Million Man March Poem
The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.
Emancipation
No rack can torture me,
My soul's at liberty
Behind this mortal
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answer
Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
On every wind, indeed, that blows
I hear her yell.
How delicious is the winning
Of a kiss at love's beginning,
When two mutual hearts are sighing
For the knot there's no untying!
What freeman knoweth freedom? Never he
Whose father's father through long lives have reigned
O'er kingdoms which mere heritage attained.
Though from his youth to age he roam as free

I Prefer the Gorgeous Freedom

I prefer the gorgeous freedom,
And I fly to lands of grace,
Where in wide and clear meadows
All is good, as dreams, and blest
A Sad State Of Freedom
You waste the attention of your eyes,
the glittering labour of your hands,
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not a morsel;
Freedom on the Wallaby

Australia's a big country

An' Freedom's humping bluey,
An' Freedom's on the wallaby
Oh! don't you hear 'er cooey?
She's just begun to boomerang,
She'll knock the tyrants silly,
She's goin' to light another fire
And boil another billy.
Our fathers toiled for bitter bread
While loafers thrived beside 'em,
But food to eat and clothes to wear,
Their native land denied 'em.
An' so they left their native land
In spite of their devotion,
An' so they came, or if they stole,
Were sent across the ocean.
Then Freedom couldn't stand the glare
O' Royalty's regalia,
She left the loafers where they were,
An' came out to Australia.
But now across the mighty main
The chains have come bind her
She little thought to see again
The wrongs she left behind her.
Our parents toil'd to make a home
Hard grubbin 'twas an' clearin'
They wasn't crowded much with lords

When they was pioneering.

But now that we have made the land
A garden full of promise,
Old Greed must crook 'is dirty hand
And come ter take it from us.
So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O' those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!

It all started as a vision of one man,

A dream of one son,
A son of Ghana, a Nkrumah who sang a song
whose words were written with the blood of our brothers sailed off
to plantations as slaves to white masters.
A song whose rhythm and tune was hummed
by the cries of our people
Feet shuffling, hands trembling, mouths begging
We dont know them!
We dont know the freedom fighters
The rhythm of whips cracking on their backs
The sound of gunshots reigning in the dull yet sunny days,
Dark, yet moonlit nights.
The sounds had become a dirge to their ears
Maafa, Maafa
his was a song whose commas and full stops,
verses and chorus was the stamping of weary dusty feet
forcibly led into crammed concentration and detention camps
to die of hunger, thirst,
Informers, turncoats or home guards
His dreams song like a bush fire, spread across the land,
Across the great Nile, Lake Tanganyika, the Zambezi and Chania
Kingston, Harlem, the Caribbean.

The strained tunes of this sweet song became a spell

Its spirit haunting Edward Wilmot
W.E.Dubois, Muamar Ghadafi
His majesty Emperor Haille sellasie,
Marcus Garvey,Julius Nyerere
Malcolm X, Fela Kuti,
The fathers of Pan-Africanism.
This was a song of pain
The Pain of being an African
A black man, a native
The pain of being un civilized
uneducated, uncultured
The pain of being colonized by a fellow human being
whose religion, traditions and language
was no more superior than our own.
Maafa, maafa
They sang a song of strength
A song of unity
A song of one enemy
A song of liberation
Africas Liberation
Like a chain, their weakness,
Would be their greatest strength
Being black, being African
This song gave them a reason to unite, to fight
To think as one country, one man, one mind
This song was the cry of
A unified Africa