Chuck D Quotes

I'm a socially concerned citizen of India. I have strong views on issues of social and political relevance. But it's very difficult to voice it in an intelligent manner without it sounding contrived. Because people think you're saying or doing all this as a PR exercise, not from your heart.

I don't play politics; I don't do that. I think there's too many celebrities out there claiming what they believe. I think it's our job to get people out to study the issues and to know what they believe and what they want to vote for.

I'm not an activist per se, but I have strong feelings about things. People can jump on celebrities for being ill-informed or naive, but I've got a right to say what I believe.

We're all living blinkered lives, and we're not seeing what's going on and looking to change it. I'm not saying that everyone has to make a political statement, but we need to be more aware of what's happening and why.

We didn't start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what's going on around us.

I don't believe there can be a poetic novel without political consciousness. I have a strong political conscience.

Consumerism diverts us from thinking about women's rights, it stops us from thinking about Iraq, it stops us from thinking about what's going on in Africa - it stops us from thinking in general.

I don't spend my hours worrying how to slip a social message into my act.

The great work which is to be done is to change public opinion.

One of the things that I've always not liked is the modern players have always concentrated on dancing in the end zone and BSing when serious things were going on in this country that needed to be changed. So my opinion is that when these young people stand up and risk their careers, that's a good sign for everything and all of us.

I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.

I love how close you are to current affairs and social issues here in England. Out in L.A., you have to make an effort to look outside that little microcosm. It's almost like it's a virtual reality to imagine a problem there.

I need to get a tiny bit more 'woke.'

Colin Kaepernick had a... maybe he had an epiphany. Maybe he had a realization that 'I have a higher calling the playing quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.'

Though I do believe that when you live in political times it is inevitable that your art be political, I also think we need to start making activists celebrities rather than trying to make celebrities to be activists.

There have been many socially conscious concept albums. I wanted to make a 'social consciousness' concept album disguised as a country record.

If you're an activist trying to do something important, I salute you. Most of us just give ourselves ethical brownie points for watching Channel 2 instead of Channel 3, like characters in a broad dystopian satire.

Wokeness, for what it's worth, is a buzzword that a lot of people are not truly understanding the depth of. I think sometimes things work their way into the zeitgeist, and they lose their weight. And wokeness is one of those words that has reached that point.

I feel comfortable putting my political stances out there without feeling as though I am filling some sort of quota. I don't have a wokeness quota for the day.

I think, in my own life, I'm pretty political. I think I have some very strong ideals, and I struggle a lot with it. I struggle a lot with feeling like, 'I have a platform; should I be saying more?'

Some people are diplomatic, some people are outspoken, but the next generation is very clear. People are speaking their mind out. People are worried about other things besides their own careers. It's not accurate to say that they don't speak out.

I'm politically incorrect. I don't get into politics like that. I speak about what I know and what effects me personally, and effects my folks.

I'm not one to go down that road to say I have some kind of social consciousness.

I don't believe in hopping from one social issue to the next to be a part of the movement for a moment. Anything I'm involved in is something that I would die for. I can't support things that don't feel genuine.

I think Jane Fonda is to be admired for her stands.