RZA quotes:

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The most revealing books are the Holy Koran and the Holy Bible. The Bhagavad Gita is a great book as well, and the works of Buddha. These are the major influences on the world.
I think you gotta have some humor [in your story]. People gotta have a moment to laugh and feel that it's not taken 100% serious. That's important.
Grew up in Stapleton House village, where blood flood the waters in the streets like oil spillage
But for the wise, it says in the Bible: when a wise man hears wisdom, he reacts. When a fool hears it, his acts are folly. If you wanna be a fool, help yourself, it's not my problem.
I advise everyone to find an island in this life. Find a place where this culture can't take energy away from you, sap your will and originality. Since anything physical can be mental, that island can be your home. Turn off the electromagnetic waves being forced upon you, the countless invisible forces coming at you all the time.
Life comes when you have knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, when you can see for real, touch, and feel for real, know for real. Then you are truly living.
An architect is a person who builds homes or structures, stadiums even. A Supreme Architect is someone who actually built the universe. So, if I say I am the Supreme Architecture, I'm letting Allah speak. I'm becoming a vehicle.
Every aspect of your personality, if you're wise, you're able to separate each one of them and put them to use at the best time for the best position.
Kung fu was made so the monks could train their bodies and move their bodies with strength, so they could be physical enough to gain mental enlightenment. Before that, they kept falling asleep when [masters] were trying to teach them.
Complainin' to my lawyer how this rookie tried to frisk me... Jealous of my jeep, I gave his badge to the chief, And got his ass directin' traffic in the heat for a week.
Aiyyo, camoflouge chameleon, ninjas scalin' your building, No time to grab the gun, I already got your wife and children
Confusion is a gift from God. Those times when you feel most desperate for a solution, sit. Wait. The information will become clear. The confusion is there to guide you. Seek detachment and become the producer of your life.
I think one thing most of faiths have in common is they all realize that everything manifests from one [god]. That's whether you're dealing with science, religion, Bible, whatever. They all realize it all came from one, and then from one, you got many.
In today's society, the forces against you are heavy against you. The whole goal is to get knowledge of yourself, but people are so far from themselves that they don't believe themselves.
We put out real hip-hop at a time when it was turning into pop or R&B ... We brought the focus back to the music in its rawest form, without studio polish or radio hooks. ... People want something that gives them an adrenaline rush. We're here to supply that fix.
Every cell has certain knowledge. I think knowledge is contained within the genetics, even. I think scientists will find that. I don't think there's a gay gene, though. They may argue that down, but I don't think that, because that's a preference.
Cats be talkin', "Bobby I ain't feelin' ya." But I bet if I was peelin' your cap back with a two-shot Dillinger Hot lead released from my cylinder, You'd be talkin' 'bout, "Bobby I'm feelin' ya!"
Everytime you put an album out with any producer you do the same thing.
Fear is a state of nervousness only fit for children
Took two drags off the blunts, and started breaking down the flag: The blue is for the Crips, the red is for the Bloods, The whites for the cops, and the stars come from the clubs Or the slugs that ignite, through the night, By the dawn early light, why is sons fighting for the stripe?
A day to God is a thousand years, Men walk around with a thousand fears. The true joy of love brings a thousand tears, In the world of desire, there's a thousand snares.
After knowledge comes wisdom. After wisdom comes understanding.
All I know is what I am getting.
Don't wait till you die to go to heaven.
Experience is the best teacher. But in our day and time, what we need is wisdom, because wisdom overcomes experience, because experience is wisdom, but there's a level of wisdom that overcomes the experience, and that's the experience that's already lived by others. I'm not trying to repeat the histories. I already learned from what they did.
Find your true self. The old question, asked in many ages, "Who am I?" Once you figure out who am I, and you know who am I, then you have that knowledge of self.
Happiness is something you get from yourself. If you're completely satisfied with yourself, nobody can take it away from you.
Happiness is total and complete satisfaction with yourself
Have you ever been with a girl, you had an argument and you wanted to make up with her? As long as you say nothing, you can make up with her. If you say something, it's going to be another argument, you are going to get no pussy and you go to bed mad. But if you don't say nothing, it gets closer and closer, y'all make love and it's all expressed through love.
How can hip hop be dead if Wu-Tang is forever?
How can you defame mud when such a beautiful flower grows from it?
I ask people what piece they are on the chessboard. And some people say 'I'm the king' or 'I'm the knight.' And then they ask me what piece I am, and I say, 'I'm no piece. I take the position of God.'
I believe in the 12 Jewels and try to provide my childrem with them. That is Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding, Freedom, Justice, Equality, Food, Clothing, Shelter, Love, Peace and Happiness.
I build myself back up and come back stronger. That's what I do.
I can't say unfortunately but sadly - I've got babies in more than one household.
I feel when I say I can do something and carry this opportunity to make movies, it's because I took the time to study it. A boxer can't just jump in the ring. You've got to practice and practice and practice.
I had a lot of problems in my life. I've been a sickly kid, I had a strange life. They said I could have been blind, handicapped, asthmatic, there were all kind of different problems about me.
I invested in the album. Look, if I never did anything again in music, it wouldn't affect my life materially. I live a very satisfying life. Not because I've made a few dollars, but because I have a wife who loves me and children who wait for me to come home. And that is beautiful. I think that's the American dream: to be at peace at home.
I know for an actual fact that the things I say or that my brothers say on the mic are valid for life. What we say, if you're smart you get it, if you're stupid, you learn about 3 years later.
I love vinyl, you know? To me it has depth, warmth, it's the best way to really sample.
I make a lot of money in my life, 50.000 dollars are nothing.
I think as time goes on that generation of rappers who's making it now is gonna face the same thing that my generation was facing, which is the decrease of sales. The decrease of hard-copies.
I think most of my approach to life has been like that, to find order in chaos, to be in the middle of a bunch of things happening at the same time, but find focus. I strive to be like the sun sitting in the middle of the solar system with all the planets spinning around it - millions of things going on. It's just sitting there being the sun, but exerting gravitational effect on everything. I think man should look at himself that way.
I'd hate to compare art to life but I think a movie is an entity of its own, and when it's done, you want everybody to like it like you want everybody to like your children.
If a woman and a man who have an argument keep talking they keep fighting.
If there's no deals being made rappers, what happens to the lawyers. They've got to close their firms, they can't make no money. How can they make money from the client now? Litigation!
If you don't know yourself, you don't know your nature. If you don't know your nature, you don't know where to exist. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself.
If you live through defeat, you are not defeated. If you are beaten but acquire wisdom, you have won. Lose yourself to improve yourself. Only when we shed all self-definition do we find who we really are.
Inspiration is found everywhere if you look hard enough.
It is sad that the world has gotten more of my time than my children, but my children benefit from it through their financial and economical freedom that I didn't have.
It's harder to make the glass than break the glass.
It's not good to argue with your woman about something, because women feel strong about it, they slap you in your face, you still go back to them.
I've been the underdog in my life since I was a kid.
Just as you must come through a woman's womb to attain physical birth, so must you come through Wisdom to achieve mental birth. And like childbirth, Wisdom often comes with pain.
Just bring love. Everybody keeps bringing violence, let's bring love.
Keep my planets in orbit, Never forfeit or quit, Move forward... I talk with the awkward slang, I walk with the Wu-Tang.
Knowledge is first and wisdom is the manifestation of knowledge. To understand this tone and pattern of thinking in the numerical way automatically resonated with me.
Knowledge is like fire 'cause it breaks down things so you can see what they truly are. It's like how a fire breaks your body down to carbon.
Love is mistranslated into sex, because sex is not an expression of love. Sex is an expression of physical activity. It can be an expression of love between two people in love, but it's a carnal expression.
My time is being shared with my fans and the people of the world, while I have got children growing with a lot of days of not seeing their father.
Once you've got an inspired spark, you've got to strive. You've gotta keep putting wood on it, so they say, to keep it burning. But then there's the alchemist side of it, that's the fire that's burning but it don't burn.
One of the greatest things that ever taught me a super lesson was when I seen a baby come out of my woman's womb. Seeing this war that could end with both lives being lost, or both lives being made, gave me an enlightenment of life itself. It sparked my whole mind to a whole other level of living. And if I never would have seen it, I never would have understood life. I never would have appreciated life.
One of the greatest things that ever taught me a super lesson was when I seen a baby come out of my woman's womb. The head and body - you know, a baby's born inside a woman's stomach, you know all that. But to watch this thing come out and fight for life, yo, and to see the woman's risking her life at the same time this thing is fighting for life, you know what I mean?
One thing that definitely did calculate properly for me was the mathematics that makes sense every day, no matter how I look at it, I can't get around it. I try to get around it, I keep trying to find one plus one is not two, somehow. I can't. People can talk about string theory, parallel realities, different dimensions, it's still one plus one is two, baby.
Sometimes brothers are in war with each other, but at the end love conquers all.
That's the beauty of love. Sometimes you don't have to say nothing.
That's what I am. I warn people. Whenever I see and I feel things in my heart, I speak it.
The body is a vehicle for the mind, and that vehicle is how you travel through space.
The first person you have to resurrect is yourself
The fundamental message of the Wu Tang music is as vast as the ocean in all reality, but it's still a straight path. You can take one lyric and by researching what that lyric is giving out to you, it should give you more than a day's worth of school, maybe three days' worth of school.
The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years. And yet it doesn't receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value of what it is, especially nowadays when it's been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free.
The knowledge of self is the most important thing, because how are you going to know God if you don't know yourself? How are you going to know anything if you don't know yourself?
The truth shall set you free. When you hear the truth, it sets you free. So mathematics is truth. It adds up. There's no error. Only time there's an error is when man miscalculates his own problems or his own equations.
The word "knowledge" itself, we like to break it down into two different words, "know" and "ledge." You've got to know the ledge. Know the limitation of things. Know where they go, know where they start from. We say knowledge is the basic foundation of the universe. But everything is first based on something being known. Then, when it's known, then it can be manifested.
There are lawyers advising to sue, so the lawyers can keep their retainments.
There are many names to Allah plus one you don't know. And each name is an attribute that flexes his characteristics: the Benevolent, the Merciful, the All-Knower... And to me, my names be flexin' personalities of myself: Prince Rakeem, Bobby Digital, Bobby Steels, the RZA, the Rzarector... These are personalities of myself.
There's strong men of wisdom in many different fields. They say 5% of the people are wise and righteous and 10% are wise but use their wiseness for wickedness or to deceive others. It's like a magician: he knows the answer to the trick, but you don't. He has to keep you blind to the truth in order for the illusion to work. When you've got that kind of wisdom and somebody else doesn't, you can always take advantage of them.
There's the 5% of the people that are wise and righteous and I'd definitely be amongst them, building, communicating, and continuing to try and figure out how we can awaken the 85%. The 85% are walking around [like] cattle, not realizing the things we do, the violence we do; you see people falling victim to all sorts of unnecessary things because they just don't know the way and nobody is showing them the way.
This is a robbery, boy, gimme them dollars. We hit the lottery, boy, it's in ya wallets!
Through great input you get great output.
Wayne is definitely one of the top five MCs to ever come out of the South.
We say knowledge is the basic foundation of the universe. Everything is first based on something being known.
What happens to a lot of artists in the music industry right now is the following: The music industry is plummeting real fast. So as the industry plummets, what happens is that there is no deals being made.
What's happening right now in the Hip Hop industry is that it is deeply affected by the general economy of America.
When I started emceein', you had 500 maybe 1000 rappers in the whole world. Now there's 1.000.000, nahmean?
When you are young "money" is not the same.
When you feel this knowledge and this spark in yourself, you've gotta continue feeding it. The best thing is to spend time around other wise men, that keeps it burning. That keeps it in every degree sharp as steel, but make sure you absorb enough to find out how it sparks from yourself, how the self starts the self. Once you've got that you should be free. That's freedom, to me.
Whether I went to school or not, I would always study.
You are a 64-track recording - the tracks are always there, they're always with you. Sometimes the harsh tracks are cranked up and the rest are rolled down to zero. Other times the sweet tracks are high and the darkness is low. But it's all you.
You can be born gay, but not because of your genetics, I think because of your subconscious more than your genetics. I think genetically, we're made to reproduce. We can't survive this route. Genetically, that's the way to go. Genetically, we have to reproduce, but subconsciously, and preferentially, you can be born with that.
You can see the weakness of a man right through his iris.
You get nothing but the truth from me.

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