RZA Quotes

#1. 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.

RZA

#2. 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.

RZA

#3. 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.

RZA

#4. 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.

RZA

#5. 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!"

RZA

#6. 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.

RZA

#7. We say knowledge is the basic foundation of the universe. Everything is first based on something being known.

RZA

#8. 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.

RZA

#9. 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.

RZA

#10. I love vinyl, you know? To me it has depth, warmth, it's the best way to really sample.

RZA

#11. After knowledge comes wisdom. After wisdom comes understanding.

RZA

#12. 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.

RZA

#13. 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.

RZA

#14. When I started emceein', you had 500 maybe 1000 rappers in the whole world. Now there's 1.000.000, nahmean?

RZA

#15. This is a robbery, boy, gimme them dollars.
We hit the lottery, boy, it's in ya wallets!

RZA

#16. Wayne is definitely one of the top five MCs to ever come out of the South.

RZA

#17. 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.

RZA

#18. 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.'

RZA

#19. 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.

RZA

#20. How can you defame mud when such a beautiful flower grows from it?

RZA

#21. The body is a vehicle for the mind, and that vehicle is how you travel through space.

RZA

#22. 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.

RZA

#23. Grew up in Stapleton House village, where blood flood the waters in the streets like oil spillage

RZA

#24. How can hip hop be dead if Wu-Tang is forever?

RZA

#25. 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.

RZA

#26. 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.

RZA

#27. 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.

RZA

#28. 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.

RZA

#29. Happiness is something you get from yourself. If you're completely satisfied with yourself, nobody can take it away from you.

RZA

#30. Don't wait till you die to go to heaven.

RZA

#31. Just bring love. Everybody keeps bringing violence, let's bring love.

RZA

#32. 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.

RZA

#33. That's what I am. I warn people. Whenever I see and I feel things in my heart, I speak it.

RZA

#34. 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.

RZA

#35. Whether I went to school or not, I would always study.

RZA

#36. 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.

RZA

#37. 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?

RZA

#38. 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.

RZA

#39. 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.

RZA

#40. 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.

RZA

#41. 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.

RZA

#42. 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.

RZA

#43. 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?

RZA

#44. Happiness is total and complete satisfaction with yourself

RZA

#45. 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.

RZA

#46. Keep my planets in orbit,
Never forfeit or quit,
Move forward ...
I talk with the awkward slang,
I walk with the Wu-Tang.

RZA

#47. Once you have some yes's in your life, the no's are not that bad.

RZA

#48. Through great input you get great output.

RZA

#49. Inspiration is found everywhere if you look hard enough.

RZA

#50. 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.

RZA

#51. You can see the weakness of a man right through his iris.

RZA

#52. Aiyyo, camoflouge chameleon,
ninjas scalin' your building,
No time to grab the gun,
I already got your wife and children

RZA

#53. 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.

RZA