Jimmy Cliff Quotes

I don't know where life will lead me, but I know where I've been. I can't say what life will show me, but I know what I've seen. Tried my hand at love and friendship, but all that is passed and gone. This little boy is moving on.

I'd rather be a free man in my grave, than to live life as a puppet or a slave

My pigment is of the earth, and collecting my sacred fire from my solar plexus with the central sun of the earth.

I grew up in a condition where I could have chosen to go either way, negatively or positively. So I kind of chose to go positive and that stayed with me through my life, always have to have a positive outlook on whatever situation there is

I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it.

I have not become the artist I believe I am. I want to become a stadium act. I'm not done at all.

I would love to see no more ghettos but the things is, there's no diplomacy in the ghetto. They want to tell you something, they tell you straight!

Someone like Katy Perry - I like her writing because I listen to music as a songwriter. I like a lot of her songs - like, 'Firework' is a song that I think I could write.

I love to create and that's what gives my soul the satisfaction.

I wanted to travel the world - I don't how that idea got in my head, but I really wanted to see the world ... towns, cities, countries, I wanted to see them all.

My most important relationships were with my father and grandmother.

The music that I represent and helped to create and establish was born in Jamaica.

People in the Hall of Fame tend to clap their hands and say, 'OK, I've done it all,' but for me, it was a new beginning.

We're not to be surprised at all what we see happening in every part of the world. It's a change of the return of things.

I think we all have a role to play in life.

People might say, 'Jimmy Cliff, you've done a lot, achieved a lot. What more can you want?'

I've done a lot of things to become what I've become, out to create and establish a musical form and I call it movie.

I am not one of those artists who is cemented in one way. I am able to, you know, make the happy, jovial, lighthearted music too. We need that in life too. So it's like that to me.

I'm very attached to my family and protective of them and miss them, and that situation, my connection with that can make me become very vulnerable.

When I lived in the U.K., I recorded a lot of ska and rock-steady styles of Jamaican music. But people there weren't accepting it. So I began using a faster reggae beat.

The love is the part of us that can never go. It's the essence that was always there, so that can never go.

In hindsight, I see the great value of family and how it moulded my life and kept me together. So now family means everything to me.

Since we're coming into a rebirth, and there's a consciousness of health, because the disease that is death, we are able to overcome that.

I've got a hard road to travel and a rough, rough way to go. Said, it's a hard road to travel and a rough, rough way to go. But I can't turn back, my heart is fixed, my mind's made up, I'll never stop, my faith will see me through.

I visit studios. Just to get the feel, the smell, and see what other people are doing. Not only listening to the radio, but going to studios, greeting musicians and artists, just getting a vibe.

I've abused myself a lot over the years. But my voice is still intact - really, it's better.

Beyond everything else, that's one of the things that kept us going, that keeps me going, you know, the eternal love, knowing that I am in the love of the all and all love is in me.

It was the vehicle that propelled me to international stardom. ("Harder They Come") I was known as a singer/songwriter before that, but people did not know me as an actor. It showed the world where the music I contributed to create was coming from. It opened the gates for Jamaican music, internationally.

It's important for me to go back into the ghetto, where I'm from. I still get my oxygen from there. I don't live in the ghetto anymore, but every time I go back, I'm still seeing the same things that I lived.

Certain artists have a role to echo the echoes of the people and that's what I'll be doing on my next album.

Rastafari means to live in nature, to see the Creator in the wind, sea and storm. Other religions pointed to the sky, and while we were looking in the sky, they dug up all the gold and diamonds and went away with them

I had the global outlook that I really wanted to capture the world. I would like the attention of the world at least and I wanted that.

Christian values were important at home. Cleanliness. Don't steal. Don't lie. Those were the rules, and they were strictly enforced. Especially the stealing and lying. When you broke the rules, you got a beating. I always broke the rules a lot.