Immortal Technique Quotes

I feel my body weakening but my spirit is fine, ready to go to war with devils at the drop of a dime

Those people who kill women, children, and defenseless civilians are about as Muslim as mass murderer Christopher Columbus was a Christian.

I'll leave you fulla clips like the moon blockin' the sun.

I can't imagine Revolution being quiet, unassuming, or bashful

Devils used to be God's angels that fell from the top. There is no diversity cos we're burnin in the melting pot.

I Freestyle my Destiny, It's not written in Pages.

Hold the person that you love closely if they're next to you The one you love, not the person that'll simply have sex with you Appreciate them to the fullest extent, and then beyond 'Cause you never really know what you got, until it's gone

People who go out and try to be a rebel at night,
Try to make up for the fact that they settled in life.

The military ain't there for the people's protection,
They're just there to protect an investment.
That's why people get arrested, electrocuted, molested,
Connected streets are infested with those tired of protesting.
Traumatized children grown in guerrilla garrisons,
9/11 generations pale in comparison.
And you will learn a lesson repeated through history:
That no matter what you think, occupation is not victory.

I have favourite songs for different things. The diversity of it is the strength.

Read about the history of the place that we live in and stop letting corporate news tell lies to your children

I have a strong army I keep with me and we don't go out there looking for problems. A lot of people have this perception ... but I don't have a superiority complex about me because I'm from New York or because I'm Peruvian/Black. I think some people get caught up in that stuff.

So when the devil wants to dance with you, you better say never,
Because the dance with the devil might last you forever.

The kingdoms of Africa and Mesopotamia, machine gunning your body with depleted uranium, this is the age of microchips and titanium, the dark side of the moon, and contact with aliens.

That as much as we're afraid of New World Order coming and of Canada and America joining together, that if we don't learn the lessons from the past then it doesn't matter what you want to call it: the North American Union or the South American Union, or the European Union, or the African Union ... it doesn't matter what you call it as long as the arrangement remains the same.

It doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are. I always tell people: If you want to be a part of hip-hop, you just need to have a heart. You need to have the courage to tell the truth.

I hate it when they tell us how far we've came to be; as if our people's history started with slavery.

Your mind is your weapon. Load your weapon.

You can make the future, but it starts with leaving the past.

If I lend my support to a specific cause, it has to be something that I look over and that I have a complete understanding of and it's not just some extracurricular bullshit.

I wasn't always a revolutionary, I used to live life like a criminal even though I was going through high school or college, or the fact that I was smart, had no bearing on that. People can have intelligence all the way but have no direction. Not all criminals are idiots.

A man who walks with God, can walk anywhere. Hence, I fear nothing.

I never tried to be Jay Z or Big Poppa,
I'm underground like them dead children buried in Gaza

The average ordinary person, in the worst slums of America, someone who might even hate the law and disagree with the government, they would do something about that [abandoned child]. But in Afghanistan, people hardly have the means to take care of themselves, let alone a random child on the street.

Plastic metaphors and carbon copy similes that aren't going to do anything for anybody and it doesn't showcase creativity; it showcases the fact that the soul of the music has been compromised to control the industry.

As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue.

You can not change the past but you can change the future.

If your religion hasn't made you a better person, then it has failed you as a religion.

The purpose of life is a life with a purpose. So I'd rather die for a cause, than live a life that is worthless.

The way music reflects real life, the way that painstakingly, over the years, what I have said is really a metaphor for what's happening to America. It used to be about, or tried to be at the very beginning, about what was right. It has stopped being what was right for America; it started being about what was right for companies that are in control.

I don't think the war is going to end, but the war is just going to change. So we talk about change all the time, well that's what's going to change. You know, we tried having an idiot try and justify the war and give us these rationales and now we're going to have a very articulate and capable black man say it.

Pharoahe Monch is a long time supporter of my music and I'm a long time supporter of his music so when we met each other it was almost like a natural occurrence.I met him before a few years earlier and we were just politicking with each other and we had a conversation about possibly doing something but our schedules have always been in conflict.

We still haven't gotten the message; we still don't see that it's bad. And then we copy everything about their [Roman Empire] structure. I mean Paul Bremer was the proconsul of Iraq. We're still using ancient terminology, we still have Senators and we have an Emperor, almost.

The Devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th,
The New World Order was born on September 11.

Art has to be, you know, trade itself, conform to the old strict guidelines set forth by how it was going to act in the future.

Because I know that the early Greeks and Romans and the early Europeans at that age did not see racism as we see it now - because racism was created to justify slavery to build the capital for capitalism - and back in the day they respected talent over race. We had an African Pope in the late 5th century, we had an African Emperor of Rome, and early church Fathers were black.

My first Hip Hop concert was at the Apollo at the age of 12. Southpaw's father was interviewing Queen Latifah and Treach as well as many others. The place was so packed no one could move but I got to be backstage with the video equipment and so I saw the show from a great place.

This is the ultimate war of ideas. You're trying to get somebody to change their mind about conservatism, because that's exactly what we're fighting out there. We're fighting an insanely fundamentalist mentality that relies on taking certain things absolutely literally, and they're people on both sides of the conflict doing that. Even now, some people still take the Bible literally, and those are the ones wanting to fight a war against Islam.

If you don't have self-respect, if you don't have dignity, if you don't have some true knowledge of self and who you are, and where you're coming from, then you're absolutely lost.

When God said "let there be light" I turned it the f-k off.

Love ... doesn't need a complicated metaphor And sometimes nothing needs to be said at all

True wealth is having your health, and knowledge of self.

I see the world for what it is, beyond the white and the black.

Hip-hop is about the human condition; it's about people's lives.

I won't trade humanity for patriotism.

It's not like America's view of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is going to change. There are some things that are going to change and some things that are not going to change.

How do you think policing is in places like China, or North Korea? Whatever we experience, in terms of our policing, I also wanted to make known that the rest of the world suffers ten times more because of that power dynamic; because of the fact that there is no Posse Comitatus in other places which is what prevents in our country, or what is supposed to prevent the military from taking on a policing role of its own people.

I'll throw ya gang-sign up, and then I'll spit on my hand.

People are educated into the fact that as a people we stand a better chance of knowing how to work the law if we know the history of the law and the history of our people's relationship with it.

I've had lots of discussions with my Muslim brothers and sisters who have said to me, "Christianity is a white man's religion" But I'm like, "how is that possible when Christianity went into Africa before it ever went into central Europe?" Even the first people to become a Christian nation were not Romans, they weren't the Byzantines either, they weren't the Greeks ... the first people to claim a Christian empire were the Armenians.

Unfortunately, as inspiring as people find Barack Obama, change can be interpreted in so many different ways. I think he might do a great deal of good things for social programs here in America and as well, as much as people want to characterize anybody who's a leader and try and sell that, and market it and characterize them in a good way or a bad way, I think it's very telling about the system that we have when we come to the realization that the war is not going to end.

I work with Kick G.A.M.E., the grassroots artist movement. Not to tell people we have the best union plan in the world, but to show people that if some activists, if some revolutionaries, if some street organizers from the hood can come together and put together a preliminary program to give health care to independent artists.

The interesting thing about that is one of the greatest critics of socialism and leftwing writings was Robert Michels who wrote a series of essays called "The Iron Law of Oligarchy" and in these essays he discusses how no matter what sorts of freedoms are advertised or put into a society structure, that all societies, all form of governments - whether they be a Roman republic, whether they be a democracy, whether they be a Russian communist system, whatever, a tribe ... a tribal council - all of the continuously, throughout the ages, have all converted back into an oligarchy.

Traditionally people are on the side of the government all the time.

I would love for [Jesus] to come back because I would love for him to face what is happening and to really have some sort of perspective. In that same respect, I'm sure that Prophet Muhammad would be disgusted by what some people use his name to justify.

If we can sell out a venue that's just as big as this in Omaha, if we can sell out DePaul in Chicago tomorrow, which looks like it's going to happen for 1100 or 1200 people, then obviously everyone will know that we can affect between 700 to 1000 people at a time in damn near every city in America, then I think that's a good start. It also tells people, and gives them an example, how independent hip-hop is able to do this without gigantic corporate support.

Universal truth is not measured in mass appeal.

Poverty makes people do reckless things, but [the rich] do worse to protect their [interests]

I love the place that I live, but I hate the people in charge.

We're rhyming; we're carrying the banner representing hardcore hip-hop to the death.

Working your whole life wondering where the day went, the subway stays packed like a multicultural slaveship.

I just had to get this stress off my chest like breast reductions.

If you go platinum, its got nothing to do with luck, it just means that a million people are stupid as fuck.

Your fans can't just pop in whenever they want. I'm not gonna allow someone to just drop over my house whenever they want like, "Hey what's up? I bought your album so what's for dinner?"

I would say that everyone that you see who is successful in the mainstream, at the top of Billboard, who has a Top 40 hit ... at some point, unless they're a complete fabrication of the industry with no identity of their own and a carbon copy clone of someone else, they in themselves started out being underground.

The mind of a child is where the Revolution begins,

Using numerology to count the people I sent to heaven,
Produces more digits than 22 divided by 7.

Pessimism is an emotion not a philosophy.

My enemy is not the average white guy, its not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the streets. My enemy is the white I don't see: the people in The white House, the corporate monoply owners. Fake liberal politicians-those are my enemies.

Scary rock n' roll bands had all the devilish imagery. But at the same time, it's not because they were devil worshippers, they were saying that society is run by devils. It was human society that created these things, they become the devils. This is what you worship. This money is what you worship. This idea is what you worship.

People who have a conservative viewpoint both religiously and politically and they fear that the world is going to be thrown into perpetual communism.

People always have these debates about who their favourite rapper is. And I think it's based upon what mood that particular person is in. If someone's favourite rapper is a lyricist then they're focused on rhymes or substance. If someone's favourite rapper is a party rapper, you know, someone who makes music about the clubs ... "Oh, he's my favourite rapper". No, his subject matter is your favourite.

Attempts to extinguish me don't even bother me none. Like retarded kids throwing ice cubes at the sun, a victory against Immortal Technique will never be done.

I think that when you look at history and when you look at these facts that shape nations and shape countries and give us present examples of how we're supposed to live, we find more and more often that we're not paying attention to what's actually happening.

We're more Christian than the Pope. And, I mean, that's not our religion. We pray to the Gods of our conquerors ... all black and brown people.

I think that as much as any leader is marketed we have to learn that unless we inject ourselves specifically and link our revolution to the economic struggle of our people and address those specific issues then we're never really going to have control of what happens.

Only a f-kin imbecile would think they un-correctable, cause you're susceptible to becoming more than a spectacle.

Hell is not a place you go if you're not a Christian, it's the failure of your life's greatest ambition.

It isn't me making money as much as it is me spending my money in a way that I feel is effective. My methodology is to say I'm not just going to throw money at a problem but rather personally invest myself in it.

Since the police department is becoming more and more militarized we're stuck in a position where we're reverting to that sort of behaviour that other places still suffer from because they're kept in that post-colonial state of development indefinitely so we can reap the benefits of taking whatever natural resources they have.

Changing the course of destiny, so I'm strapped with weaponry cause the government don't give a f-k about protecting me.

People were like, "Someone who made a song like this, there has to be more to them. I'm interested in hearing how they would describe something else." So my flow has matured, my voice has matured, the content has gotten more descriptive but at the same time we still talk about a violent reality that exists in the world which is why this is a supplement to the Revolutionary series and it's not a part of it but it's the same Immortal Technique.

The business of beauty isn't a natural model;
It's built to be the opposite of the cultures we topple.
These magazines got you caught in a hustle,
Cause when you starve yourself, your body doesn't burn fat, it burns muscles.

I just want to be remembered as someone who wanted people to think free and wanted people to be free, whether it's at the end of the day, or at the end of the mortal coil.

I'm a business man and I'm a grown man. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to restructure my life, support my family with this music ... I don't have time to deal with the repercussions of breaking somebody's jaw or breaking their nose.

The perfect world for me is to find some sort of inner peace. I believe that a man that walks with God can walk anywhere.

I put the truth out there, I put the historical facts into Hip Hop to show us how much history repeats itself and that if we truly want to evolve as a human race, we need to stop sticking each other in ridiculous categories.

The Government covers their own ass from things they fail to do to protect its own people from corporations that control the government, which is the reason we don't have checks and balances in this country. They checked how much balance they needed to influence congress and all the other branches of government in some way, shape, or form, and cash is king.