Michael Franti Quotations

We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace.

You learn a lot when you're barefoot. The first thing is every step you take is different.

'Star Wars' is mythology. It's like Greek mythology or Shakespeare. It's the story of good versus evil over a very long span of time. The storytelling is universal and timeless.

I eat bags and bags of cashews. I've got them in the kitchen, and about ten feet away I've got another bowl on the kitchen table. In my backpack, I've always got a bag of cashews. I started eating them in the airports because that's the one food that you can find in every airport that's actually nutritious.

During my travels in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Europe and all over the United States, I have seen and heard the voices of people who want change. They want the stabilization of the economy, education and healthcare for all, renewable energy and an environmental vision with an eye on generations to come.

No life's worth more than any other, no sister worth less than any brother.

If we do not change our negative habits toward climate change, we can count on worldwide disruptions in food production, resulting in mass migration, refugee crises and increased conflict over scarce natural resources like water and farm land. This is a recipe for major security problems.

I'm not an idealist. I know we're not going to be living in a world that's peace and love all the time. But we can live in a world where we kill each other a lot less.

Music has the power to bring people together like no other art form.

Music is sunshine. Like sunshine, music is a powerful force that can instantly and almost chemically change your entire mood. Music gives us new energy and a stronger sense of purpose.

Johnny Cash was a rebel, not only just in the musical sense, but he was somebody who was for the people, and an advocate for labor, for workers, for prisoners, people who have been trapped by the criminal justice system.

I hope I inspire people to dream bigger than what they are living, but a dream within their reach.

The rap community has been singled out as more homophobic than other groups, but I don't think that's right. It's homophobic, all right, but no more so than the heavy-metal community or the Hollywood community or any other community.

We have a saying in my house, my kids and my girlfriend. We say, 'Be your best for the greater good, and rock out wherever you are.'

Rap has so many possibilities that need to be explored. There are different factions of rap, but some are in a rut. Rap doesn't have to be about boosting egos and grabbing your crotch and dissing women. There's a way to make political and social issues interesting and entertaining to the young rap audience.

It doesn't matter if you're black, white, gay, straight, come from different countries, different language... every single person is significant and is meaningful.

All the freaky people make the beauty of the world.

After a show, I'll get the 16-year-old white kid whose lip is pierced, his head is shaved and his parents hate him, and the young gangster from the screwed-up 'hood, and they say that now they realize there's someone out there who thinks like they do.

You get everything you could have ever wished for if you're willing to give that eternal bliss away to somebody else, to give it back.

I took a trip in 2004, a year after the war started in Iraq. I played music on the streets of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians. I'd also play for U.S. soldiers at night when they were off duty in the bars. Then I would talk to people, and I would film them and ask them about their life and the conflict.

I've always found that the poorer the places that I go, the more smiles I see, and the more happiness I see.

I always identified with that feeling of being an underdog. So I always was looking to connect with and meet people from other cultures, to experience people living a different life that I am.

Traveling to the Middle East and playing music for people on the street, for soldiers, for people in hospitals, and for people who lost their homes, and seeing people open up through the experience of music really restored my faith in music, in art, and in culture to change things.

With all the people hating and hurting each other, I don't understand how people could get upset about people of the same sex caring for each other.

Music gives us new energy and a stronger sense of purpose.

Music was a central part of my childhood because my mother played organ and piano in the church, and that meant all us kids had to be in the church choir.

My greatest sense of accomplishment has come from having two amazing sons, but it's also a paradox in that the times when I felt like the biggest failure have been times when I felt like, as a parent, I wasn't making the right decisions or succeeding in the way that I should.

My house was filled with music. We had a piano, and my brothers and sisters played instruments. Even though I was around it, I played basketball.

My favorite band of all time is The Clash. The thing I love about The Clash is they started out as guys who could barely play three chords. They dabbled in reggae, punk, rap, jazz. They came to a sound that could only be defined as The Clash. It was impossible to say what it was. I admire them for that.

People worry that gas prices are high and how they are affecting their pocket book. But they want to know about renewable energy. People are really starting to question things, and that's made people look to the future in a positive way.

I came up playing in both punk rock bands and hip-hop bands, and I found a more universal way of reaching people, especially with music that has a message to it.

I'm always trying to find optimistic ways to express myself.

I have a desire that I want to make people feel happy through my music. I'm always trying to find optimistic ways to express myself.

I have moments all the time when I play.

History shows that Americans believe in doing the right thing.

Jamaica's a country of great dichotomy. On the one hand you have a tourist industry with great beaches and resorts, but on the other you have such great poverty and the violence that goes along with that.

I think that fear comes about when there's things in the world that we want to change, things we're scared or angry about, and we can't change them, and so we become fearful; we develop anxiety.

I went to Iraq as a listener. I just got tired of watching the news every night and hearing generals and politicians talking about the economics and the politics of the war, and never explaining the human cost of the war. I just wanted to go there and listen to people.

Our country was founded on immigration. We are all occupying Native American land here. At what point do we say 'It's our land, and nobody else can come here.'

Recording in Jamaica is like nothing else. The studios are always closed in America. But in Jamaica, the studio doors are wide open, and there's music blasting out in the street. You can see the reaction of people immediately.

My music is part of the quest I have to find new ways of telling stories, and also, I want to inspire people.

My usual day is I get up around 11 o'clock and do yoga and then eat afterwards. Then I have sound check and play soccer and do running with the guys in the band after sound check, and then do the show and eat dinner after the show and usually get to bed around 3 o'clock by the time we get everybody on the bus and get rolling.

Like sunshine, music is a powerful force that can instantly and almost chemically change your entire mood.

My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood.

My mother, she made sure all of us were treated the same and had the same opportunity to grow and develop, so that when we left the house, we could fly on our own. And she also knew when we got out into the world, we'd treat others that we came across with that same treatment and respect.

When I first started, my songs were the politics of anger. As I got older and hopefully wiser, I wanted to be part of the politics of answers.

We would play songs live on stage, and then we'd watch their reaction we were receiving immediately, if people were dancing and singing along. If they weren't, then we'd go into the dressing rooms of the different NBA teams that we were playing in their arenas, and we'd change the songs right there.

When someone can't afford to wear shoes, it's not just about them not having shoes on that day. It's about a cycle of poverty that exists within their community.

To sit back and say, 'Oh, we're going to let the government do whatever they want, right or wrong,' is giving up.

Epitaph is a label that I've admired for a long time. It's kind of like a record label that would be my own personal record collection at home: punk rock, hip-hop, and great, classic, creative music.

The world can't have a global solution to climate change with U.S. action alone; and the world can't have a global solution without U.S. action.

People underestimate the hip-hop audience and the capacity to understand politics when it's part of music.

The way the music comes to you starts to affect how you listen to music. When you're a kid, it's 'Does it rock? Does it make me feel good? Does it make me tap my feet? Does it make me go to sleep?'

The more places I go to, the more I realize I understand so little about the world.

I try to use the attention that I get to help and to serve, and that's really what I'd see as my work - to serve my community, serve the planet, serve my family. And I think a celebrity is someone who draws the attention on themselves, and then it kind of stops there.

It never would have happened without the Internet.

It's a really personal thing for me to write a song.

It really is a strange time we're living in, when saying 'Don't kill people' is considered a radical point of view.

Everybody's opinion is equally valid, and I feel like everybody should have an opportunity to speak out, and everyone should have the courage to speak out.

Not all artists have a responsibility to be socially or politically aware, but they do have a responsibility to make great art. They have to find some truth and put that in their music.

The U.S. has historically been the world's largest contributor to climate change.

In Jamaica, the music is recorded for the sound system, not the iPod. It's about experiencing music together, with other people.

In the '80s, Ronald Reagan inspired me to become politicized, because I grew up in that era when everything I cared about was under attack.

I really encourage people to travel so we can see how the rest of the world views our country. That's really important. Secondly, as artists, activists, and citizens who vote, we have to begin to vote from our heart.

I really believe that, as an artist, my opportunity to help to bring about awakening is one that should come from a personal process that someone has, and not from me telling somebody that this is the way it is.

I don't know if it's so grand that I can change the entire world, but I know that I can help one person. So that's the goal.

I'd play music on the street, especially in developing nations where a lot of kids couldn't wear shoes. In order to relate with kids that would be following me barefoot, I would take off my shoes, and they would all laugh at me because I couldn't go three steps without wincing.

Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

I think my soul is intact, but my methods of reaching people are completely different.

I drive a hybrid. It's a Ford Escape. That's my only car.

When we all see justice, then we'll all see peace!

Star Wars is mythology. Its like Greek mythology or Shakespeare. Its the story of good versus evil over a very long span of time. The storytelling is universal and timeless.

My goal has not ever been to change minds, my goal is to open minds.

I went to the University of San Francisco on an athletic scholarship. I didn't study in high school. I was just there to get by and to play basketball. But a funny thing happened to me when I got to college. I got challenged by the work and the professors.

Today we are in a war against war - music is our power.

The world can't have a global solution to climate change with U.S. action alone; and the world can't have a global solution without U.S. action.

My parents said sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you. But I always felt a sense of exhilaration after a fight; it was the names that really hurt me.

It shouldn't be a Republican or Democratic issue whether we take care of the environment. That should be a human issue.

People ask me a lot, 'what can one person do,' and I say 'I'm not really sure what one person can due except come together with other people.

Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.

You say you're a Christian, cause God made you, you say you're a Muslim cause God made you, you say you're a Hindu and the next man a Jew, but then we all kill each other cause God told us to? Naw!

Those who start wars never fight them, and those who fight wars never like them.

The human interest, and the natural interest, and the spiritual interest of this planet need to begin to take a priority over the corporate interest, the military interest, and the materialistic interests.

It's also hard for me to understand growing up not knowing where I came from. I searched for my parents - I started when I was twenty; I found both my mother and my father when I was twenty-two. Trying to catch up on twenty-two years that we can never get back, trying to reconcile that - that's a hard thing for me.

Can't keep Love like money in the bank

Investing now in safe-guarding people by helping them to adapt to climate change, will help save money and lives while building resilience.

San Francisco has always been a haven for misfits and weirdos. I'm both of those, which is why I came here.

I think the main thing I would say is, don't settle. Don't settle for something that's not great.

When you're in Jamaica, unless you're in a tourist spot, you don't hear Bob Marley; you mostly hear dance hall music.

The U.S. has historically been the world's largest contributor to climate change.

When I first started out, I thought it was enough to make an angry song that pointed out the problems of the world.

The personal revolution is far more difficult, and is the first step in any revolution.

Through music I either tame my demons or unleash them and allow them to be what they are. I don't want the music to be about provocation, I want the music to bring you to a place where you feel at home

Every single soul is a poem, written on the back of God's hand

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just to stay human.

I went to Iraq because I wanted to see what one year of occupation had done to Iraqi society, and I went to the West Bank and Gaza Strip because I wanted to see what three generations of occupation had done to Palestinian society. I found a lot more hopelessness and despair in Palestine.

It's that transformative nature of love and music and yoga that really inspires me.

There are so many things to be worried about, and I wanted to make a record that people could put on, and it would lift them up the way the sun did for me each day.

I could be really sad and I start to cry; I feel alive then. I could be at a concert and I throw my hands up in the air and I feel elation; I feel alive then.

The times when I feel not alive is when I feel stifled, when I feel like the emotion that's in me is not coming out. I'm too busy, too hectic. I'm serving my iPhone more than my spirit. Those are the times I feel bad.