Words matter. These are the best Curtis Mayfield Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
My fights and arguments, even with God, went down on paper.
I was a very observant child. Almost anything could become a song to me.
With all respect, I’m sure that we have enough preachers in the world. Through my way of writing, I was capable of being able to say these things and yet not make a person feel as though they’re being preached at.
My art and my creativities were totally something that was of my own heart and mind. I could never let anybody dictate to me what I should write and how I would write it.
I didn’t put Priest down. He was just trying to get out. His deeds weren’t noble ones, but he was making money, and he had intelligence. And he did survive. I mean, all this was reality.
I don’t like to appoint myself to nothing, knowing I’m no better than anybody else. But it always makes me feel good to know I try to do the best I can, and those who might observe say, ‘Hey, I can take a little something from that person.’
Being a young black man, observing and sensing the need for race equality and women’s rights, I wrote about what was important to me.
With a spinal cord injury, which most people don’t really know about… there are many, many complications that actually lead you through your life, and sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down.
I didn’t have to leave my neighborhood to be surrounded by the things that ‘Super Fly’ is about. It was easier than most scripts because it was about an environment that I knew.
This accident, or incident, happened in the most secure place I could have felt I was in: Walking onstage with my guitar, you know?
When I was just coming up, I always wanted to be able to perform to a large crowd with a symphony.
Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain.
Maybe the words that I say is just another way to pray.
To talk about the ’60s almost brings tears to my eyes. What we did. What we all did. We changed the world.
My teacher told me I’d never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
Painless preaching is as good a term as any for what we do.
Everything was a song. Every conversation, every personal hurt, every observance of people in stress, happiness and love… if you could feel it, I could feel it. And I could write a song about it.
