Top 33 Hugh Masekela Quotes

I don’t think anybody has ever been able to live up to what they promised. I don’t know a government that has ever been successful at that because once they get into power, things change and the world is controlled also by business now.

Watching a Kirk Douglas movie, ‘Young Man With A Horn,’ made me want to be a trumpet player.

I always make the joke that I go home, to one of my homes, to go and do laundry so I can go on the road again.

Corruption is everywhere, man.

I’m very interested in heritage restoration, and I’m working with a group of people to create a number of academies and performance spaces to encourage native arts and crafts and to explore African history.

If I don’t make heritage visible and the strength of mother tongue important for my grandchildren, it scares me that they might say in 20 years from now, ‘Well, it is rumoured that we used to be Africans long ago.’ And in many urban areas, it’s already happening.

Just because Nelson has been released doesn’t mean the government has done us any favors. We have nothing to be grateful for. The government destroyed our country, destroyed our people. If anybody needs amnesty, it is the government.

I lived for music since I could think.

I’m travelling more than ever. I don’t have the answer as to why, but the demand seems to have grown as I’ve got older.

I live a very enjoyable life. I understand what moderation is.

What people don’t know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system.

I am a forward-looking person and live in the moment to build for the future.

I don’t think any musician ever thinks about making a statement. I think everybody goes into music loving it.

I think the most difficult thing that has had to happen in South Africa for the previously disadvantaged communities is they had to reconcile that the oppressor has been enriched and the establishment is now making five or 10 times more profit than they were during the time the economic embargo was on them.

When people campaign for positions, they promise people all kinds of things.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

I’ve got to where am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found – the wealth of African culture.

The apartheid people were actors, and they had to act out their part in their beliefs every day. That’s why we always saw them as being comedic.

In some townships, political parties are run by thugs financed from Cape Town. If we don’t have support of the police, we can not have the ability to organize and to gain even a slight semblance of power.

When I left South Africa in 1960 I was 20 years old. I wanted to try to get an education, and music education was not available for me in South Africa.

In my view, Africa’s real problems are cultural.

It’s obvious that the rest of the world loves high African culture – African culture, period.

I have a major respect for nature. I’m an environmentalist.

I couldn’t get away from the gramophone. It was the only thing that I ever really liked, and I was singing along by the time I was five years old – to the Modernaires and Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

Once in a while, I treat myself to a cheesecake or carrot cake.

I think it is incumbent on all human beings to oppose injustice in every form.

I’ve always stood on one fact – that all over the world, there are only two things, the Establishment and the poor people. The poor people are a massive majority and across the world they are exploited in different kinds of ways. The Establishment depends on exploiting raw materials and the poor.

The thing that is being lost is heritage. In Africa, religion and advertisement and television and media hype have gotten Africans to where they are convinced psychologically that their own heritage is heathen, pagan, barbaric, savage, primitive.

One of the greatest things that could really happen to Africa is for us to get rid of the borders and for the leadership not to think that the countries belong to them… We didn’t create the borders to start with.

To tell you the truth, man, we spend most of the time travelling in hotels, in festivals, in concert halls, clubs, airports. The most unenjoyable part is all the security at airports.

Africa has been troubled for a long time – well, the world has been troubled ever since I was born.

Apartheid didn’t impinge on music. It impinged on people’s freedoms.

I don’t think I have the power to forgive.