Saul Williams Quotes

We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didnt walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.

Some rather seek up high Than dig and grind that inner truth

If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.

Come, my love, we have oceans to sail.

I have an acquired taste for language, yet it is seldom an actual focus of mine.

I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it.

I feel pretty vulnerable all the time.

When I finally decide that I'm ready to get out of bed, it could be the sunlight, it could be the fact that I'm awake, and, OK, first of all, I wake up in the morning because I have to go to the bathroom.

The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins, downsizes, and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals.

Dying is something you have no control over. Why waste your life being afraid of it?

I have a very family-like connection to hip-hop, which is why it frustrates me so much.

I think it's misleading to think that art is only there for escapism, only there for our dreams of being rich and f - king whoever we wanna f - k.

I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons

Honestly, I don't always want to get up in the mornings, but I do anyway.

I think that heartbreak is a good thing.

I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done

I'm somewhat of an empath, I would say. I relate easily to ideas and stories, books, films, music. I'm moved by all of these things. Art in general. But not just art, you know?

It's crazy when you see very little reflection between what's played on the radio and what people are talking about in the streets. It lets you know how far off we are from a real movement.

It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America.

The wind is the moon's imagination wandering.

I hear the weed is really strong in California.

Sometimes our thoughts and feelings are our most prized possessions... and then there are times to let go of your possessions and wander.

The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it.

I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance, Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.

You start to realize connections between experiences and things that push your buttons, and things that have touched you in those vulnerable areas and what-have-you. And they form a little collection over time - at least I do - and as time progresses and new things are learned, you kind of sift through those things until they're air or danceable, you know? But they start as this thing that's either too hard or too soft to dance to.

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression.

I'm usually trying to get back into the dream or analyzing the dream. And yeah, the days, most days begin like that.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written

I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown.

For all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our children so long for the sacrifice and endurance of our mothers and the sustained breath of our fathers we live

Сommercial hip-hop is not youth rebellion, not when the heroes of hip-hop like Puffy are taking pictures with Donald Trump and the heroes of capitalism - you know that's not rebellion. That's not "the street" - that's Wall Street.

this is her body this is her blood

I think everybody on this planet does that - trying to capture your dream after you wake up.

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations.

If you feel something, you should do it.

Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.

If you're just addressing your own emotions and challenging yourself to find some sort of harmonious sense of being in life and questioning authority and questioning what's given and questioning what's expected of you, you're already on the cusp of finding something in yourself, and maybe waking something in somebody else.

I want to connect music to its highest power - which is heightening consciousness and affecting people's reality. That can't be done in normal ways, not according to my experience.

Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.

My love is my soul's imagination. How do I love you? Imagine.

The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence

intelligence is intuitive you needn't learn to love unless you've been taught to fear and hate

I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the "black people's CNN." Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.

We all have different relationships with music. But the music is always there.

We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone. Our music is our alchemy.

Fax me a fact and I'll telegram a hologram or telephone the son of man and tell him he is done. Leave a message on his answering machine telling him there are none. God and I are one. Times moon. Times star. Times sun. The factor is me. You remember me.

The organization of self, and all self-aligning principles would be those that I promote.

Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace.