Chuck D Quotes

If I can't change the people around me, I change the people around me.

I came from a mother and father who always made me secure in my beliefs, and that's where the love came from.

Reflect each day on all you have to be grateful for and you will receive more to be grateful for.

Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding don't come out of the microwave. You got to keep moving forward because the evil doesn't sleep.

It's weak to speak and blame somebody else ...When you destroy yourself.

Culture is this thing that we can exchange among ourselves as human beings to knock aside our differences and build upon our similarities. Cultural exchange is the ultimate exchange.

I got a letter from the government the other day I opened and read it...it said they were suckers.

Our freedom of speech is freedom or death, We got to fight the powers that be!

I spread the message of hope and of unity. That's what gets me up in the morning. I can tell you what is wrong, but I can't tell you how to fix it. I'm a raptivist, not a politician. I deal in hope.

The best way to boycott is to build your own

I totally hate when somebody takes a classic and desecrates it. I like Jimmy Page and P. Diddy, but what they did to 'Kashmir' was a debacle.

I think right about now we have to beware of marketed Malcolms and Martins. Real people do real things.

The best American is one who considers themselves as a citizen of the world.

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

Music and art and culture is escapism, and escapism sometimes is healthy for people to get away from reality. The problem is when they stay there.

Minds are the real estate of the 21st century.

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

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

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.

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and when people start getting it confused, that means they need to sit down with some real people.

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

To live a life you love, you must Love the life you live.

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

One of the problems with hip hop is lack of infrastructure and not being able to control its own course. I don't like that hip hop is full of infantile 35-year-olds. Hip hop cannot afford to be lazy.

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

I think governments are the cancer of civilization.

You can't master time, but you have to work your hardest to manage it.

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

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

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

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

Public Enemy is the security of the hip-hop party.

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

Hip-hop is a part of rock & roll because it comes from DJ culture. DJ culture is the embodiment of all genres and all recorded music, if you actually pay attention to it.

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

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

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.

I never live alone, I never walk alone. My posse's always ready And they're waitin' in my zone.

I think traveling the world has helped to keep Public Enemy alive. We've never solely depended on the United States.

Music should be some kind of nourishment.

Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.

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

Downloadable music is the biggest musical phenomenon since the Beatles, and the music industry is slow to come to grips with that.

Burn, Hollywood, burn, I smell a riot goin' on, First they're guilty, now they're gone!

The powers that be are trying to meld, shape, and corral the culture of hip-hop into another speaking voice for the government.

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 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 don't have any exteriors that would actually put me into some kind of different air that would actually intimidate somebody to stay away from me.