Top 128 Quotes & Sayings by Boots Riley

I'm not a classically trained composer, and I can't sing very well.

I just make music based on what I believe.

There are a lot of people out there doing cool work. I went to South Africa with Talib Kweli and the Roots for a couple of weeks. And even a lot of the groups that aren't called 'political' or 'revolutionary' have a lot more to say than what you hear on the singles.

We're told, 'If you want to change the world, vote.' And really, if you want to change the world, there's a lot more things that you can do.

People want something that's relevant to their lives. They want something that means something to them, and they want something where it seems like people have thought about what they're saying.

Many people feel that unions aren't militant enough for them and don't do anything.

Rarely, someone comes around that is influenced by so many things but is looking for a new way to do something.

The point is, is that when you elect a politician, it has nothing to do with their personality. Politicians perform a function, a role in government. And the role of city government is not one that serves the people, unless the people make them do what the people want.

If the only time you bang the drum is when it's time to get someone elected, and you don't get involved in a mass movement, then you're working against real and substantive change.

The Obama campaign decimated the newly regenerated anti-war movement in 2008. And he definitely isn't anti-war.

In Chile, they had penas, where the community would come together to sing and plan how they were going to overthrow the government. There's a real hopefulness in that community style of organizing.

The goal with a show is to push forward the passion in a visual and sonic way. It all comes out in a trance-like way, fast and pulsating. Then people can go home and think about the lyrics later.

One time, someone came up to me and said, 'I know so-and-so. They're a professor at Harvard. They're a big fan of your work.' But that doesn't impress me more than any other people feeling that way.

The ultimate credo of capitalism is to exploit people. It's not like this is just an incidental problem; it's inherent in the system.

Either I'm really into the organizing, or I'm really into the music. As I've been going, I've been able to figure out ways to even it out a little more.

If people come to a record store, and they can't find your album, they buy something else.

I don't need to be validated by academia, because that presupposes that academia is a pure endeavor and not guided by market forces, which is not the case.

If what you want is actual change, then what has to be built is a mass movement that is militant and can use direct action to slow or stop profit. A movement that can do that can demand whatever it wants.

You can't co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class.

There are a lot of leaders that talk about ending things like oppression - whether it's discrimination or getting a job - but the reason for all of this stuff is somebody's making a profit off our backs. That's the reason why black people were brought here in the first place. It was a profit motive.

A lot of us don't get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things.

I grew up around politics. I organized my first campaign when I was 14, a walk-out in my high school to protest the year-round school schedule.

Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear.

I think voting is the lowest form of political action that you can do. A lot of times, it keeps people from doing stronger things.

Oakland has always had artists attempting to define the immense beauty and ridiculousness around them.

I think it's important for us not just to edit the culture that capitalism creates but to create the material basis for a culture that we want.

If we created a society based on love, it would be a society without exploitation.

A lot of organizers tell me that while they are making signs or doing whatever they do, they are listening to the Coup.

I was in an organization called Progressive Labor Party and International Committee Against Racism. And I was - I started out helping to organize a farm workers' union in Central California.

No one has a copyright on working-class struggles.

The things you have to do to be effective - like forming a union at a fast food joint or a telemarketing company - aren't going to work unless you do things like solidarity strikes. Solidarity strikes are illegal. They've been illegal since the '40s, and they were made illegal because they work.

The United States is going to keep on with its imperialist ways.

People want things that address their everyday reality, and that goes for stuff that isn't political - with singer-songwriter music, people want things that touch them.

If I want to get my ideas out, I have to be involved in the mechanism that the world is ran by.

There's a very thin line between rock and funk. Funk is like a dirtier blues, and so is rock. They're close cousins.

It's nice to be recognized for what you do, but that doesn't satisfy what I wanted out of this music, which is for people to hear it and get involved in movements and campaigns.

I think I'm a little superstitious.

A record is a commodity, but so is a hamburger. Just because I work at McDonald's doesn't mean I reap the benefits of that commodity. That's the reality with most artists in the record industry: They're getting paid a subsistence wage so they can keep producing a commodity for the record label.

For me, the association with rock is one of force and anger and aggression. And definitely, in the past, I've made songs that attack like that. But what I usually try to appeal to is peoples' everyday feelings, the things that they're going through as they deal with the system on a one-to-one level.

I want to fight the McCarthyist state that's developing in this country so my kids won't live in a world where people are afraid to speak out.

I think that in order to make revolution, you need to make reforms, but you should make these reforms with revolution in mind.

When we were doing shows in the mid-'90s, the audiences were 95% black. What's happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now 'cause it's the same crowd that goes to rock shows.

If I wasn't rapping about politics, then I might have been just another person trying to sell albums, and I might have sounded like everyone else out there.

My father is from North Carolina, and he got rid of his drawl really fast. He's very much about speaking correctly, enunciating in certain ways.

I try to find creative ways to put ideas out to make the ground fertile for organizers.

Until we can democratically control the wealth that is created from our labor, there isn't real democracy.

The Coup does not support the American flag.

I used to be mad, at first, that I couldn't sound like Ice Cube. And I think that was probably one of the best things for me.

I always have thought that part of being involved with life is the same thing as just wanting to kick it with your friends, and being involved with life on a deeper level is wanting to change the situation that you're in.

My father joined the NAACP when he was 12, in the '50s. He was part of the organizing efforts that led to some of the first sit-ins in North Carolina.

My training was with some old British communists who had organized unions in the '60s and '70s. And their philosophy was, if you can't drink a pint with a man, how are you gonna get him to go on strike and risk his life?

I've gotten stopped for reckless eyeballing, for staring too hard. These officers think they're Tarzan and this is a jungle, that all the animals need to be tamed.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, in general, by putting this idea out there that the one percent is leeching off the 99 percent, is making a new discussion, making people figure out how to withhold their labor and come and put their issues on the table with the ruling class all over the country and all over the world.

When people listen to Jay-Z, they're working all day or trying to work and pay their bills, and what they hear is someone who's free. Who doesn't have to worry about the electricity. But all we're taught is that those who are rich deserve to be rich because they worked harder than the rest of us, or they're smarter.

I've never really subscribed to the theory that repression breeds rebellion. I don't think that's really true.

You can't get much done by yourself. Speaking as someone who made a movie - and it took hundreds of people to make it happen - I can say that.

This idea of 'cool capitalism' is still capitalism. It doesn't matter if Elon Musk quotes Nas.

I want my music to be not only representative of other people's lives but also contributing something to the struggle that people are going through.

I was born in Chicago. I moved to Detroit until I was six and moved to Oakland at that point. And then we had a couple years in Stockton and Pasadena. And by the time I was 13, I was back in Oakland.

Because of my politics, I don't necessarily think that the independent capitalist is that much better than the multinational capitalist; it's just that the independent capitalist hasn't grown as big yet.