Boots Riley Quotes

change starts at the bottom. I think we're disempowered by the idea that it starts at the top, when really change is like a tree. It does start at the bottom.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It's the only thing I've ever been even decent at. I don't know how to do anything else.

I used to get money and hustle and do it in the streets.

I think people were genuinely addicted to hip hop in the 90s, addicted to the idea of empowerment. I think it came from [the fact that] the rappers in the 90s, their parents coming from the 70s, had such a rich variety of records to sample.

I just feel like I aint never did nothing foul in the game. My ghetto report card has always been straight A's across the board. So I said let me go ahead and name this "My Ghetto Report Card," and I'm touching down on all 4 angles of the game you smell me? I'm touching it from all basis. The album aint banana's, it's coconuts.

The streets helps you a lot in music, cause it let's you know that you can't trust nobody and that nobody's gonna wait for you. You can't just sit there with dope in your pocket and think that people are gonna come to you. You gotta put the product out there.

As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.

This is New York, a combat zone, and everyone has to have an angle or they're not allowed over the bridges or through the tunnels. Let them have their angles, it's what they live for. You've got better things to worry about, like making sure the people that actually matter don't try any funny stuff.

If anybody can make a change it's the rappers.

I have a lot of real life experience with hustling and doing stupid stuff.

I think when hip hop first started, people were open to it, and groups like Public Enemy and there was groups like Poor Righteous Teachers and all these people who were spitting a lot of knowledge, a lot of history, questioning a lot of societal barriers was starting to be super popular.

Don't think about making women fit the world -- think about making the world fit women."

The full implications of feminism will evolve over time, as we organize, experiment, think, analyze, and revise our ideas and strategies in light of our experiences. No theory emerges in full detail overnight; the dominant theories of our day have expanded and changed over many decades. That it will take time should not discourage us. That we might fail to pursue our ideas - given the enormous need for them in society today - is unconscionable.

I'm sharp... What the street taught me how to do is how to hustle. How to make something out of nothing.

Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it's just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not inalignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.

The best change that comes to the world is when all parties are seeing each other as equal, and all parties have the opportunity to be transformed. That really goes back to the idea of dignity.

We're all connected by the system, and we all have to be a part, I think, of changing it.

I think transcending our cultures is going to be extraordinarily necessary for our survival. I don't think we can carry our cultures through the keyhole of the stretch of the next millennium

I don't think anything changes until ideas change.

Nothing I study makes me think we will survive this century. And yet why am I so happy? Because it's not too late. Just get off your ass and work for revolution.

Education is the motor-force of revolution.