Chuck D quotes:

Being positive is like going up a mountain. Being negative is like sliding down a hill. A lot of times, people want to take the easy way out, because it's basically what they've understood throughout their lives.

Government and culture are two diametrically opposed forces - the one blinds and oppresses, the other uplifts and unites.

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.

I grew up as a sports fan, and I know that a hall of fame is very different than an award for being the best of the year. It's a nod to the longevity of our accomplishment.

I like Rick Ross as a person. I like Jay-Z and Kanye West as people. But I hate the companies that they record for.

Rap comes from the humble beginnings of rebelling against the status quo. Now, rappers have become the status quo themselves. You can't rebel against the Queen and then become the Queen yourself. I attribute much of the blame to testosterone-male dominance and patriarchy.

The immediacy of the technology of the web allows us, as songwriters, to write something very sharp and quick. That has a lot to do with helping a songwriter be more reflective of reality, instead of being in an area where you have to process things. It's the difference between processing fish and catching it in a boat.

You should be a person inside the world with knowledge of your terrain. And if you lock yourself into the 2,000-by-3,000-square-mile, lower-48 box of the United States, you're going to be frustrated by its limitations. You gotta think outside the box.

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.

When you travel the world, you have to watch and you have to listen. We're not going to come in to Ireland without an understanding that there's a history that's very sensitive.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I'd rather have a hundred thousand or a million people saying I'm nuts and I'm crazy for my musical choices and what I've said lyrically, than a million people all raising their hand on the first day.

I think the Internet was the saving grace for Public Enemy. Before that, travelling the world saved Public Enemy.

People aren't going to support an artist just because they have an audio file. They have to feel a real connection.

I think governments are the cancer of civilization.

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.

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.

What made me want to become a recording artist; I was the first artist that was repeatedly asked by a label to record with them. That label was Def Jam Records.

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.

I became tired of submitting my art to a panel of corporate strategists who decide if it meets their standard of what gets into stores or not. It was quite simple for me: they act like judge and jury of my art, and that is unacceptable. I wanted to give it right to the public.

There are too many leaders anointed because they have a public voice - television, radio, or record, or whatever. That even includes myself. In the past, I'd say, 'Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.'

The Illuminati is just the evil, 'nameless' people who are behind governments.

Never try to make the same record twice, even when people are screaming for the same sound.

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

The best way to boycott is to build your own

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

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

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

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

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

Most artists are always fighting for their fame. They have that fear, like the saying goes, "out of sight, out of mind." They need to keep themselves out there. I have never had that fear. If I have any fear, it's not doing enough to reach people.

I was inspired by the classic rock radio of the Seventies. They separated Chuck Berry and the Beatles from the Led Zeppelins and Bostons and Peter Framptons of the time. In many ways, classic rock became bigger than mainstream rock.

Rap is supposed to be about keeping it real and not relinquishing your roots in the community. Without that, it's just posturing. Somebody who claims to speak for the 'hood don't need no private jet.

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.

Bass! How low can you go? Death row...what a brother know. Once again, back is the incredible, The rhyme animal, the uncannable "D!" Public Enemy Number One. Five-O said, "Freeze!" and I got numb. Can I tell 'em that I really never had a gun? But it's the wax that the Terminator X spun.

You have to wait for people to program you. The only difference is the amount of people that you're going to reach but that's going to even out in the next two or three years anyway. Computers are being bought faster than televisions right now.

The Internet was a saving grace for promoting and exposing, and even creating. It's a parallel world to the music industry that already exists, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

People are so confused about race and hip-hop that people didn't even consider the Beastie Boys one of the greatest rap groups of all time because they were white.

When culture is created in boardrooms with a panel of six or seven strategists for the masses to follow, to me that is no different than an aristocracy. It's not created from the people in the middle of the streets, so to speak. It is created from a petri dish for the sake of making money, and it is undermining the longevity of the culture.

Rappers should just be able to perform what they create and satisfy the people that like and love them.

My mother went to university, my father didn't. But they are very educated, very wise people. My father went to the military, so he's worldly.

I think too much of the music industry is for the lawyer and accountant mentality.

Real people do real things. A collective of a whole bunch of people who do things in their own locale, in their own neighborhoods - the sum is bigger than the parts, and the parts will grow.

A lot of times black folks look for love in all the wrong places. 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.

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.

My daughter's 19. I'm not asking her to develop as an artist. I'm just asking her to develop as a full person, human being.

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

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."

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I think that revolution means change. And if somebody feels like there's nothing wrong, everything's great even when it ain't, why would they ask for a revolution? Just stick the tubes into me and just pump away.

Never have so many men treated women like our foes. They call 'em hoes, but they might as well call them foes, 'cause you are totally against the existence of somebody who should live their life as an equal human being. If not, any man knows, it's like we're not equal. You know, women are usually a little better than us.

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.

A lot of the post-1977 dancefloor disco sounds had their place at one time, but you can't bring them back unless you bring back a floor.

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

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

There's people who feel that, Well, if I could profit off of sellin' sex to an eleven-year-old kid that comes through some kind of virtual portal, then I'm not really doin' it in actuality. I'm just kind of co-signing or fostering it, 'cause it can't be attached to me. I'm like, Yes it can, 'cause people are livin' through their avatar.

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.

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

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

Minds are the real estate of the 21st century.

When music turned into being like candy - what people don't realize is, yes it's candy, but candy has long-term effects if you're just eatin' it as your main meal. And that's a problem, 'cause if you got music that keeps comin' at you, that keeps coming like a piranha, coming and rippin' at your soul, it's like yeah, I'm takin' this in, but there's not much of me left. Then you'll be lookin' for something outside of music to satisfy you, or take you away.

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.

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

Music should be some kind of nourishment.

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

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

For a long period of time, the media covered rap music and hip hop the same way they cover a lot of black people, people of color, you know, the bad news happens to be news. They used to have these little stupid colloquialisms that pop up like, "You know what? No news is bad news!" They trick the masses into thinking that any news is great for you. And I just think that's a piece of crap.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

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.

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

I'm recording freely, and if I make a song, I release it immediately, so I'm more likely to believe in one song at a time as opposed to albums.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing has more words and performance than rap music.

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

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.

There are too many leaders anointed because they have a public voice - television, radio, or record, or whatever. That even includes myself. In the past, I'd say, 'Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.

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.

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

The truth has no form, you know. It's not like walking around trying to actually ask for favors and to be acknowledged, it is what it is.

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.

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.

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

You can actually take your pain and processes it into some kind of form of art. So I mean, I've easily always been able to do that, but also I've always been able to give myself perspective - or, you know, older people always give you perspective.

I adhere to the philosophy, "I don't care who writes the laws, let me write the songs."

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.

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

It ain't this big I, little You. Music is to be shared. Music is not a hustle. [Hip hop's become] cultural stripmining [by the major labels]. Some people get into this music to make a killing but music is a way to make a living.

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."

Once you think bigger than yourself then the cause becomes the issue if you think on a higher plain you can come together to work on our problems.

It's not about what you get out but what you put into hip hop as a genre.

I want to always move forward with everything I am doing. So, I do the radio show, speak at universities and other social institutions all around the world, appear on TV, and continue to create music all in the hope to keep the struggle alive.

No matter what's in your head, you go up into any hospital, up to a terminal ward and it'll smack you right back into reality that, "Hey man, whatever you're dealing with, if it's heavy on your heart and head, you're gonna have to let that go, because there, some people are dealing with unavoidable situations that they can't let go." And then they eventually let those go, so, I mean, that's helpful.

As a late teenager, the punk movement pushed me further. In particular, the Clash, which happened to leak through the time of disco, showed me that there was this cross-cultural sound that could cut across genres and audiences. Like punk was to disco, rap music was a rebellion against R&B, which had adopted disco and made it worse.

Alternative spaces, independent media, satellite, these all provide some tools by which we can work more independently and deal more directly with communities we hope to reach. Distribution is key, and finding alternative ways to do that with new media is critical.

I know I am judged unfairly by my physical characteristics and ostracized because of that so I say, "Yes, I'm a black man."

I like to drive and I like to travel. When I drive on the open road, it's like sometimes the car turns into a pen and the road is a piece of paper.

Why would twenty-six-year-old "teenagers" care about political ramifications if their backs are not up against the wall? But if their backs are against the wall they may be plucked to fight in Iraq, and all of sudden they become politicized real quick.

Public Enemy started out as a benchmark in rap music in the mid-1980s. We felt there was a need to actually progress the music and say something because we were slightly older than the demographic of rap artists at the time. It was a time of heightened rightwing politics, so the climate dictated the direction of the group.

They [US Administration] have exploited hip-hop and some of the culture around it - magazines, videos, etc. - to recruit people into the military. The Army says it will give out Hummers, platinum teeth, or whatever to those that actually join.

You know, I've written many of my songs while driving - which is against the law in many cases.

Eminem has talent, and his talent is the thing that influences many young people who would have never gone anywhere near rap. White kids in different parts of the world use him as a barometer and the standard to live up to. In some ways, Eminem is an artist who has ushered in a new movement.

As black people we were out to further our equality. I don't pay attention to the controversial connotations put on by media and the undermining labels they place on us. We pay attention to what our community situation is and what we need.