RZA Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

Inspiration is found everywhere if you look hard enough.

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

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.

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.

It's harder to make the glass than break the glass.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

After knowledge comes wisdom. After wisdom comes understanding.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Do the knowledge, meaning: look, listen, observe, and also respect. If you do that, you'll have a strong foundation to build anything you want to do in life upon. Know before you do. Look before you leap. And if you want to follow in my footsteps, make sure you step in the ones that went in the right direction.

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.

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.

Happiness is total and complete satisfaction with yourself

That's the beauty of love. Sometimes you don't have to say nothing.

You get nothing but the truth from me.

The first person you have to resurrect is yourself

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Through great input you get great output.

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.

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 build myself back up and come back stronger. That's what I do.

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?

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.