Top 35 Emmanuel Jal Quotes

I don’t know anywhere where the people are hungrier for education than South Sudan.

A lot of child soldiers lose their minds.

When you don’t educate the people, you’re crippling them. You are, you’re not giving them ways to survive.

When I first went to school, I was fighting all the time. The soldier mentality was still in me. I kept getting expelled. I found it hard to take instructions from anyone who wasn’t a military commander.

We lack role models who can inspire our young people to make change.

If you really kill, you don’t want to talk about it.

The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, ‘Don’t go back to war.’ That’s all they said. They didn’t push anything else.

If I sleep for more than half an hour, I get horrible dreams in which I’m firing a gun and helicopters are coming down.

I don’t take modern hip-hop as real. It’s entertaining, it’s fake, like James Bond.

I’m kind of weird – I don’t get excited. Sometimes I fake that I’m excited just to make people happy.

Violence in Darfur is cataclysmic.

I lost my childhood. I didn’t play football or video games. Or have birthdays or the love of a family.

Rap music is amazing, it’s beautiful. But the problem is the lyrics. The person who writes the lyrics – that’s the problem.

In times of war, starvation, hunger and injustice, such tragedy can only be put aside if you allow yourself to be uplifted through music, film and dance.

I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist.

For many Sudanese, it’s for strength they choose to be Christian rather than Muslim. My mum was a Muslim but she became a Christian later.

Knife crime and gun crime is poverty-driven, and poverty leads to insecurity.

As a child, I didn’t know what they mean by ‘to die.’ So I grew up in a place where people used to die all the time, but a child is not allowed to see a dead body. When you ask, ‘Where is so-and so?’ you’re told, ‘He’s gone to another world where we all go to live in the future.’

When you see a Sudanese walking on the street, there is a story.

A cold heart is my protection mechanism. I don’t really feel anything for anyone.

The first time I experienced war, I thought the world was ending.

Music moves my emotions because music loosens me up.

When I listen to hip-hop, it’s like no big difference how people sing in my village, ’cause bling would be their cow.

When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.

I’m still a soldier, fighting with my pen and paper for peace till the day I cease.

Sometimes words are not needed, and the simplicity of expressing yourself through an art form is one of the best ways of communication.

War destroys people’s souls. Most people focus on physical injuries, but the invisible injuries can take a lifetime to heal and affects the lives of generations to come.

In Africa, music is for everything, Music was originally used for community. That was what music was for.

I was shocked when I came to New Orleans. I never knew there were beggars on the streets here. I didn’t know that there were poor people. I thought this was Heaven, you know?

I’m rapping in English but in an African way. I’m not trying to sound like an American.

I am proof that one person can rise above any challenge, and if I can, then so will others if they are given the chance.

I’m constantly seen as a ‘foreigner,’ and I need my passport to prove my identity, to keep moving and to carry on my work.

Only a coward will use a gun to protect and get respect for themselves.

In Africa, you know, if you’re poor, at least you can go to the forest and share some mangoes with the gorillas and monkey.

What music does to me, it helps me balance my inner pressure so that I can deal with the forces outside that are trying to pressure me.