Immortal Technique Quotes

Power always becomes consolidated back into the hands of very few people... whether they be an economic aristocracy, a royalty, a monarchy which is the most concentrated form of oligarchy where it depends on one King who is ordained supposedly by God to rule.

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.

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

I hope one of my fans has one of your kids shot: and blames it on acid, prozac, and slipknot.

I think that some people from other regions expect us to be like that so I think they overcompensate for that sometimes and they're victims to their own insecurity.

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

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

When we look at these types of things it echoes to lessons we haven't learned from the past. We still don't see Rome as a negative thing; we glorify the Roman Empire. It was a fascist state under the control of an incredibly authoritarian militant pre-emptive striking genocidal regime.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

When you talk about revolution, it's very easy to romanticize picking up a gun or marching in the street, but I think before we take any of those actions, violence of course being the last one, we first have to have a revolution of the mind.

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

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.

I won't trade humanity for patriotism.

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

Just because I choose to question religion doesn't mean that I'm spitting in God's face; it's the opposite. I'm tired of people spitting in God's face. I'm tired of seeing these divisions over a different type of Christianity, over a different type of Islam.

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

I'd rather be proud of what I am, rather than desperatly try to be something I'm really not; just to fit in.

The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's the system that will eventually change you.

Maybe we'll stop training our kids to stop looking at someone and automatically seeing them as Black or White or of this religion or that one etc, and instead, as a human being. Maybe we can stop forcing our ideas like, "I don't want them to marry this person because they are of this religion or this color" on them.

Universal truth is not measured in mass appeal, This is the last time I kneel and pray to the sky, Cause almost everything that I was always ever told was a lie...

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

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?"

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

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.

They [people of Afghanistan] didn't want Al-Qaeda in their country. They didn't appreciate the Taliban taking control. But they really have an incredible amount of dignity. And by that, they are grateful for America's help in ridding them of the Taliban. The average, ordinary person is glad that their daughter can go to school now. There's no public executions, no banning of soccer games. The difference is, they're appreciative, but they don't want any prolonged military presence of the United States there.

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.

I'm baptized by America and covered in leeches.

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

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.

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

You can’t stop a revolution from breathin’, so to beat ‘em they offer people the illusion of freedom.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I try to take people at face value and then beyond, taking them out of face value and out of the category of being Black, Latino, Asian, White, Jewish, Muslim or Christian or Atheist, none of that matters to me.

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'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.