110+ Saul Williams Quotes On God, Society And Hard Work

Saul Williams is an American musician, poet, and actor. He is best known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop, and for his roles in the films Slam and Lackawanna Blues. Williams is also an activist, and has released several albums that explore social and political issues. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Saul Williams on love, life, god.

Top 10 Saul Williams Quotes

1. I think that the heart is a lot like those wonderful fruit, like coconut and mangoes, you know, you have to break the skin, you have to break it open to get to the good part.
2. Sometimes our thoughts and feelings are our most prized possessions... and then there are times to let go of your possessions and wander.
3. I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons
4. There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves.
5. I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.
6. I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance, Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.
7. My love is my soul's imagination. How do I love you? Imagine.
8. Fax me a fact, and I'll telegram a hologram.
9. When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle atop some crumbling building, spring to life a resuscitated angel.
10. Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace.

Saul Williams Short Quotes

• I have an acquired taste for language, yet it is seldom an actual focus of mine.
• I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.
• I hear the weed is really strong in California.
• Vulnerability is power.
• only through new words might new worlds be called into order
• If you feel something, you should do it.
• A lie preserved in stained glass doesn't make it more true.
• I can't say that I always want to get out of bed, you know.
• I feel pretty vulnerable all the time.
• Honestly, I don't always want to get up in the mornings, but I do anyway.

Saul Williams Quotes About Love

There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, “yes,” in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister. — Saul Williams

The MC that we love are usually the ones that we consider be kinda heartless, like 50 Cent. That's pretty much the prowess and power of an MC. That's what sells. — Saul Williams

Come, my love, we have oceans to sail. — Saul Williams

They say that I am a poet I wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottle emotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle on distant shores I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and for that matter as to whether I ever get my point across or my love — Saul Williams

intelligence is intuitive you needn't learn to love unless you've been taught to fear and hate — Saul Williams

Saul Williams Quotes About Hip-hop

I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect. — Saul Williams

Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it. — Saul Williams

Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness. — Saul Williams

What I'm aiming to do within hip-hop is to point out that the music itself is powerful; it reaches so many people. — Saul Williams

Сommercial hip-hop is not youth rebellion, not when the heroes of hip-hop like Puffy are taking pictures with Donald Trump and the heroes of capitalism - you know that's not rebellion. That's not "the street" - that's Wall Street. — Saul Williams

What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves. — Saul Williams

The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community. — Saul Williams

I was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music. — Saul Williams

I have a very family-like connection to hip-hop, which is why it frustrates me so much. — Saul Williams

Saul Williams Quotes About People

I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it. — Saul Williams

If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct. — Saul Williams

I feel that people need to be jolted out of their comfort zones. — Saul Williams

I want to connect music to its highest power - which is heightening consciousness and affecting people's reality. That can't be done in normal ways, not according to my experience. — Saul Williams

You change the beat up, you might change the way people dance to the music. If you change the way they move, maybe they'll think about it differently. — Saul Williams

It's crazy when you see very little reflection between what's played on the radio and what people are talking about in the streets. It lets you know how far off we are from a real movement. — Saul Williams

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry. — Saul Williams

There's no doubt in my mind that 'Slam' is going to be huge. It's a film about the power of language. People are going to see this and get blown away. — Saul Williams

Saul Williams Quotes About Music

We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone. Our music is our alchemy. — Saul Williams

We all have different relationships with music. But the music is always there. — Saul Williams

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time. — Saul Williams

I'm somewhat of an empath, I would say. I relate easily to ideas and stories, books, films, music. I'm moved by all of these things. Art in general. But not just art, you know? — Saul Williams

The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence. — Saul Williams

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations. — Saul Williams

Saul Williams Quotes About Black

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence. — Saul Williams

When I wake up in the morning, the first things that I see are the clouds. They're right there. I look out my window now and there's always, always a black bird of some sort on the ledge there. Usually I wake up and look at the birds. — Saul Williams

We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didn't walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud. — Saul Williams

Saul Williams Famous Quotes And Sayings

If you're just addressing your own emotions and challenging yourself to find some sort of harmonious sense of being in life and questioning authority and questioning what's given and questioning what's expected of you, you're already on the cusp of finding something in yourself, and maybe waking something in somebody else. — Saul Williams

I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown. — Saul Williams

pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (...) the beginning — Saul Williams

Art can play a major role. I look at art as an alternative source of energy, the same way we might look at wind or solar or lithium batteries. — Saul Williams

I think it's misleading to think that art is only there for escapism, only there for our dreams of being rich and f - king whoever we wanna f - k. — Saul Williams

Fax me a fact and I'll telegram a hologram or telephone the son of man and tell him he is done. Leave a message on his answering machine telling him there are none. God and I are one. Times moon. Times star. Times sun. The factor is me. You remember me. — Saul Williams

Half of the popcorn sh-t that's out there, we know it's popcorn. But we're like, "It's my guilty pleasure." I feel like we have more guilty pleasure than actual f - kin' pleasure. — Saul Williams

I used to have weird practices in crowded used-book stores in New York where I'd go in and just stomp my foot and see what fell from the shelf. And of course, because it's an unexpected encounter, there's always some magic that comes from it. — Saul Williams

There is a lot of fun to be had when you try and fit as many words as you can within a three-minute song, but there is also a lot of fun in trying to get that message across in three words, or better yet when the music can overpower the words and convey something really pure and perfect that affects our psycho-emotional space. — Saul Williams

I'm very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance. — Saul Williams

i am like a survivor of the flood walking through the streets drenched with God surprised that all of the drowned victims are still walking and talking — Saul Williams

i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots — Saul Williams

I think everybody on this planet does that - trying to capture your dream after you wake up. — Saul Williams

Dying is something you have no control over. Why waste your life being afraid of it? — Saul Williams

Jay Z and President Bush have a lot in common, that same brash confidence. — Saul Williams

I think that heartbreak is a good thing. — Saul Williams

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written. — Saul Williams

Your library teacher would say, "What happens to a generation that doesn't read the Classics?" Me, I'm not your library teacher. But I have some of the same questions and concerns, you know? — Saul Williams

When I look at certain aspects of popular culture - not everything because I like a lot of things - sometimes my heart breaks a little bit, just a little bit. I begin to ponder what happened to this generation, I don't know. — Saul Williams

Some rather seek up high Than dig and grind that inner truth — Saul Williams

she stuck a bookmark in my heart and walked away — Saul Williams

Punk rock meditation, that's what keeps it going. That's how I let go, you know. It's exactly what I do, I blast it and run around crazy banging my head on the wall. — Saul Williams

this is her body this is her blood — Saul Williams

It was always important to me to be that kid who could rock the party as well as rock the English professor's mind. — Saul Williams

You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket. — Saul Williams

American culture is often so self-consumed that we often think that our problems are just our problems. — Saul Williams

the anchor man thrown overboard has simply rooted us in history's repeating cycle — Saul Williams

My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus I rhyme. — Saul Williams

The hero is the person who's afraid to run away. — Saul Williams

If not then you must be trying to hear us and in such cases we cannot be heard. We remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five senses cannot sense the fact of our existence. And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no facts. — Saul Williams

Books are carefully folded forests/void of autumn/bound from the sun — Saul Williams

I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done. — Saul Williams

You can't do anything that's not political in this time and age. — Saul Williams

The organization of self, and all self-aligning principles would be those that I promote. — Saul Williams

For all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our children so long for the sacrifice and endurance of our mothers and the sustained breath of our fathers we live — Saul Williams

The wind is the moon's imagination wandering. — Saul Williams

Two autumns and I have not changed enough. — Saul Williams

I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped into new terms of being. — Saul Williams

I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way, it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas. — Saul Williams

The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it. — Saul Williams

You start to realize connections between experiences and things that push your buttons, and things that have touched you in those vulnerable areas and what-have-you. And they form a little collection over time - at least I do - and as time progresses and new things are learned, you kind of sift through those things until they're air or danceable, you know? But they start as this thing that's either too hard or too soft to dance to. — Saul Williams

There's so much to be found in literature, especially if you don't have the money to travel or the means to get out of your neighborhood or get off work. — Saul Williams

Talk to strangers when the family fails and friends lead you astray when Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps and it turns out God is gay. 'Cause angels and messiahs love can come in many forms: in the hallways of your projects, or the fat girl in your dorm, and when you finally take the time to see what they’re about perhaps you find them lonely or their wisdom trips you out. — Saul Williams

Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair. — Saul Williams

The thing I've been talking about with daughter is the idea of - and I'm talking about essentially in America - the possibility of, a lost generation. I've been listening to a lot of music - as a fan, as a critic, as somebody who likes to dance - but I hear, you know, within these songs and half the people I hear, these philosophies encoded and embedded in these songs. — Saul Williams

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal. — Saul Williams

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression. — Saul Williams

the greatest Americans have not been born yet they are waiting patiently for the past to die — Saul Williams

I'm usually trying to get back into the dream or analyzing the dream. And yeah, the days, most days begin like that. — Saul Williams

The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins, downsizes, and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals. — Saul Williams

I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions. — Saul Williams

I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history. — Saul Williams

When I finally decide that I'm ready to get out of bed, it could be the sunlight, it could be the fact that I'm awake, and, OK, first of all, I wake up in the morning because I have to go to the bathroom. — Saul Williams

'Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into. — Saul Williams

I'm a very sensitive person at times. Not just to words that anybody says, but in relationships for example, the people that you open up to, you listen to, you hear - you know? So a lot of times, the key to some of my vulnerability is just through things, simple things - or critiques or whatever - or could be very simple things that are said. — Saul Williams

It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America. — Saul Williams

she kissed as if she, alone, could forge the signature of the sun — Saul Williams

Art itself is underserved when we don't realize the power of it. — Saul Williams

The MC has to be just that, a master in control. They can show no signs of weakness. — Saul Williams

Life Lessons by Saul Williams

1. Saul Williams encourages us to use our voice and creativity to speak out against injustice and oppression.
2. He reminds us to stay true to our beliefs and fight for what we believe in, no matter the cost.
3. His work is a testament to the power of art and music to bring about social change.