Ice T Quotes

I ain't got no beef with east coast, I think it's just being hyped up.

in the mornin' po-lice at my door Fresh adidas squeak across the bathroom floor Out the back window.. I make a escape Don't even get a chance to grab my old school tape

If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.

I'm a big fan of all styles, even Biggie and Wu-Tang, but I gotta do my thing.

Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.

It's just that when you heard hip-hop, no matter where you were, it was a culture that kind of made you want to try to be part of it. Whether you thought you were an artist, whether you thought you could be a DJ, whether you thought you could breakdance, or whether you thought you could rap. It was the kind of culture that had a lot of open doors.

A good emcee will rhyme a lot of different ways. Don't limit yourself.

...As an artist, you need the naysayers and the nonbelievers to add fuel to your creative fire.

The truth is, everybody I've ever met who's successful is a workaholic.

Real men hold themselves accountable for stuff.

Being cool is when you win, you don't get too happy; and when you lose, you don't get too mad.

Now everybody's bloggin'. I heard somebody say, "Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation." Everyone's an authority so there's nobody in power, 'cause everyone thinks they're in power.

If one person comes in and says, this is the way life should be, I think you're asking for chaos. I think you gotta let different people live different ways. It's a big world.

I've been pulled out of my nice new car and laid out in the street by the police, interrogated and then have them get in the car and roll off leaving me lying in the street without even saying 'Get up.' The humiliation that they can put on a black man because they determine that you ain't got the money.

Los Angeles is a microcosm of the United States. If L.A. falls, the country falls.

It's like they want to shut rappers down. They want to silence us. The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer.

I'm a far cry from politically correct, because I don't really care what the political views are. I don't care what the people say. I'll say my opinion. That will always make you controversial.

With the invention of the blog and all this Internet stuff, everybody has an opinion; everybody has a voice. In fact, there was a time when the average person didn't have a voice so you had to pick an artist to speak for you.

The best way to compliment an emcee is to say his lyrics. That's how you say, "Hello."

Who can protect themselves from betrayal? The day your brother wakes up and plans to do you dirty, there's no defense against that.

An MC is somebody who can control the crowd. An MC is a master of ceremonies so not only can you say your rap, you can rock the party.

I think everybody wants to redeem themselves after they've done something that might be considered negative. I don't think anyone wants to go to the grave negative.

Diet food is for lazy people.

Dog's just want to sniff an ass and eat some food.

You know, you'd hide behind a Public Enemy or Ice Cube, or Bruce Springsteen, or U2, because they spoke for you. But now everybody's bloggin'. I heard somebody say, "Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation." Everyone's an authority so there's nobody in power, 'cause everyone thinks they're in power.

I don't watch daytime television, I have a job, I work and, you know, I think daytime television is really for women.

When we say a rapper, a rapper can say a rhyme. But an MC can rock a party.

When you start a business, go for the lowest hanging fruit.

I think what's happenin' is that, with the overflow of music, it's been diluted. There was a time when people would go search out underground records. Now, underground means free, and people don't really care for it. So now artists tend to go more pop and look for the radio.

The more you try to suppress us, the larger we get.

One of the things about powerful people is they have the ability to make it look easy.

What I'm trying to tell people is that police brutality in the 'hood is nothing new. And the thing is that whether this guy, the cop killer in my song, is real or not, believe it, there are people at that point.

I think when people say 'real hip-hop,' they want it more buried in the streets. They want it more connected to the streets and the grime and the roughness of the streets. They don't want the fluff.

I'm pretty open book, I'm also the kind of person that will say, 'That's none of your business,' too.

Arnold Schwarzenegger blew away dozens of cops as the Terminator. But I don't hear anybody complaining about that.

People think I'll kill you if you make a joke. I compare it to Clint Eastwood. I've only seen Clint Eastwood in movies. You think if you make a joke to Eastwood, he might shoot you.

Redemption just means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong.

If somebody wants to kill people, they don't need a gun to do it.

You can't come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that's connected to the system.

I couldn't possibly have lived all the things that Ice-T on the records lived.

You could be a Green Beret and a kid could jump out from behind a building and hit you with a rock. No matter how tough you become in the military, there's a way to die: there's nothing safe about it.

AIDS is such a scary thing and it's also the kind of thing that you think won't happen to you. It can happen to you and it's deadly serious.

You can't get what you want all the time in life.

As long as I'm around the cats in the hip hop scene, they'll throw me a track and I'll write a rap over it.

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street.

I'll never sell 14 million like Hammer, I just wanna do a good Ice-T show.

I want to be able to say that a rap career could be ten albums.

The next day, I got a phone call from him and he told me to come and read for a movie called New Jack City. So I went over there and they told me I was gonna wear dreads and play a cop.

I don't have to put out another rap record. I can do it at my casual pace.

Ultimately I am happy that everybody is embracing hip hop and the sounds from the streets.