Top 180 Quotes & Sayings by Chuck D - Page 2

My thing is, the older you get you gotta stand up for what you believe in, and keep bashin' away.

Music used to cause revolutions and I'm not seeing much revolution anymore.

Men have periods; they're called wars.

And when I say it, they get alarmed... 'Cause I'm louder than a bomb.

McDonald's offers a king's ransom to any hip-hop artist who is able to put Big Mac into a song. MTV - and more to the point, Viacom - is succeeding in extending a teenage life to twenty-nine or even thirty-one years old. It is about extending this market and removing any intelligent substance in the music.

If you want to be an artist, truly try to write what you believe, and if you write when you don't believe then you should try to become an actor.

Rap music and rap records used to always be like this: we get one or two shots to a piece cause it was a singles marketplace and when the major record companies saw that it could also handle the sales of the albums then they started to force everybody to expand their topics from 1 to about 10 and you gotta deliver 12 songs, so a lot of times if you took a person who wasn't really developed, and the diversity of trying say 12 different things, you know the companies were like "Cool! Say the same thing 12 different ways."

I'm not a U.S. citizen. I mean, I'm an earth-izen. Borderline policies are crap to me.

My work throughout my life is always representative of the time we live in. It's all about keeping it in order and keeping it in gear.

Oh, America is slipping away from the rest of the consciousness of the planet - slipping away.

Truth is truth no matter what I think.

No matter what the name, we're all the same pieces in one big chess game.

One side of the street is a Church; across the road is a liquor store. Both of 'em keepin us poor.

Share and enjoy the fruits of this planet.

Someone like Jay-Z does have a timeless quality, but it's much different than ours. You can look back at something like "At the Hop" by Danny and the Juniors or the music that was on American Bandstand in the 1950s-'60s.

Let the voice be the voice of the voiceless and let it come from the world of rap music to keep the stereotype and the peace at the same time.

I have to be conscious of what I'm sayin' because people are gonna come at me about this sh*t.

With black people, there are 50 Hitlers over the course of history.

These days you can't see who's in cahoots, Cause now the KKK wears three-piece suits.

Your closest and your most dedicated fans will be your ultimate test. They will test you.

I think a good thing that needs to change is that people should be at least fearless about expressin' themselves.

All I want is peace and love on this planet. Ain't that how God planned it?

I encourage more blacks and people of color to get a passport. That's one way to help put people on an equal platform.

Try to find like-minded people. Don't choose your friends based on the outside, choose your friends based on your similar views or something that you can learn from.

Try to do your best to look people in the eye and talk to them without a gadget being in between you all the time.

I think hip hop should be a living word. And what I mean by the living word is like yo, you gotta have the words that provide life.

Many have forgotten what we came here for, Never knew or had a clue, so you're on the floor. Just growin' not known' about your past... Now you're lookin' pretty stupid while you're shakin' your ass.

You can't take anything with you. So I don't understand this whole psychotic area of greed, I don't get it.

The best medicine for pain sometimes is some kind of logic and common sense from older folks. They tell you, "Okay, you're not the only one who actually went through this."

The minute I get swelled up about something, something has always brought me back down to earth.

Where else can you go with respect to the work, lyrics, and message of the music? If you are past high school age, you can get by with saying very little the first or second time around. However, after a while you know you are going to have to say something beyond high school stuff.

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps

I wanna go to the clubs and actually have a good time too, but at the same time, when the party's over, I have to go back to the real world and try to figure out who I am.

We don't see the people who are doing real things getting enough props. We often see politicians who are everywhere but nowhere at the same goddamn time. You know the kind of person: You see them everywhere on television but nowhere in front of your face.

If you empty, you can be filled up with anything. It could be water or it could be gasoline.

You're always looking for somebody to love you, be accepted, and there's the insecurities that are even transmitted through rap. Everyone is trying to aim to please too much. Number one: They're trying to please whoever signed them to a contract. Number two: They're trying to appease a gigantic audience and they get this false magnification of love. I came from a thing which nowadays would be the exception to the rule. I came from a mother and father who always made me secure in my beliefs, and that's where the love came from. Which made me look at everything else as procedure.

When somebody greedily comes along and thinks that they gonna snatch everything, and you have so many people that have not, the passion that drives me is trying to make them understand that they have to share. So, my art reflects that; the whole reason I do what I do reflects that.

If you want to speak about different ethnicities and diversity, rap and hip-hop are all over the planet. Every country, from Turkey to Australia, now has tons of hip-hop artists. The music and artistry have moved way faster than the corporatization of the music. You do need organization and opportunity for these artists to express themselves, and I don't think it has to come from a corporate co-signing.

Americans are not sharp. You can be sharp in your own area, I guess, but in this world you gotta be conscious of everybody else in the world too. You just can't be drunken with constitution and hear, okay we're gonna do this and then you hear well, we're gonna go kill this guy 'cause he's a terrorist and you keep gettin' it.

Bigger doesn't mean better unless you really understand what bigger is.

I think the problem for the future generations is a lot of people ain't takin' the time to look for them and give them their voice, so therefore for their voice to be heard, they gotta bang more pots on the ceiling, so to speak; they gotta do crazy things just to get recognized. I just feel that whenever you don't give a generation some kind of voice, then expect side effects.

Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.

Comin' from the school of hard knocks, Some perpetrate...they drink Clorox. Attack the black, cause I know they lack exact The cold facts, and still they try to Xerox.

Try to master technology instead of it mastering you.

I don't believe that everybody is out of some kind of cookie cutter, so the thing that protects me is always being level with myself, even to myself.

Excuse us for the news, You might not be amused; But did you know White comes from Black? No need to be confused.

A lot of artists have been persuaded into doing whatever they can do to gain attention. The media, of course, will position and promote the worst of them to the front page. The sidewalk to crime becomes the marketing campaign. These artists have seen it work and sell millions and millions of records for other artists.

Of course voting is useful. But then again, I don’t put a big glow to it. Voting is about as essential as washing yourself. It’s something you’re supposed to do. Now, you can’t go around bragging, expecting to get props because you voted. That’s stupid.

If you have no soul you can gut it out. You know, like a marionette, you'll just follow what seems to actually give you whatever you ain't got.

I'm most passionate about, you know, making everybody understand that we should all have equal access on this earth.

Slavery was incredibly prosperous for some people, at that time. It was not a bad business plan, but it was terrible and inhumane. But as a business it worked.

If they can send you to war at 18, maybe it's beneficial for some people to think that most of us gotta go to war for our own existence.

Young people are having a hard time with what's reality and what's fantasy these days...We created discussion. It wasn't to create controversy for sale's sake, but rather it was my obligation to use the medium for discussion. Nobody's discussing the grown-up topics; they are faking and fronting.

I think the problem for the future generations is a lot of people ain't takin' the time to look for galvanizing artists and give them their voice, so therefore for their voice to be heard, they gotta bang more pots on the ceiling, so to speak; they gotta do crazy things just to get recognized. I just feel that whenever you don't give a generation some kind of voice, then expect side effects.

The Internet is one area that I have used pretty effectively to break free of corporate control.

I always remain optimistic. There are three levels of music production: the majors, indies, and what I call "inties," music distributed via the Internet. The Internet is one area that I have used pretty effectively to break free of corporate control.

If you go get a passport, it might encourage you to at least consider the world around you.

A visit to the hood through a record, or through a video, or through a film, is a lot safer than actually visiting the people in real life. It became a business model. It became a revenue engine that, you know, you can get to the hood without ever going there.

The real thing is the heart, you know the heart shouldn't be covered with concrete.

So, rather than trying to humbly mix with the rest of the world, we are forcing ourselves upon it. We seem to create conflicts with everyone.