Ice T famous quotes

If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.
-- Ice T

#Believe #Killers #Cop

I'm pretty open book, I'm also the kind of person that will say, 'That's none of your business,' too.
-- Ice T

#Book #Kind #None Of Your Business

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.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Artist #Doors

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

#Jobs #Thinking #Watches

The truth is, everybody I've ever met who's successful is a workaholic.
-- Ice T

#Work #Successful #Truth Is

The best way to compliment an emcee is to say his lyrics. That's how you say, "Hello."
-- Ice T

#Emcee #Way #Hello

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

#Country #Fall #United States

I'm very much against the anonymity of bloggers and social media. I just hate it and I think it's really cowardly.
-- Ice T

#Hate #Thinking #Media

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.
-- Ice T

#Real #Thinking #People

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.
-- Ice T

#Thinking #People #Might

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

#Love #I Love You #Passion

Dealing with the old school rappers, you see a lot of humility. When you're new, nothing is wrong. Everything is tight. Because you're trying to hype the world into believing in you.
-- Ice T

#Believe #School #Humility

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

#Emcee #Different #Way

A lot of people play single to work some angle. I'm always about keeping it real. If that's how I'm living, that's how I'm living.
-- Ice T

#Real #Play #People

If you're really a rapper, you can't stop rapping.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Rapper

I've always been a person that, if I'm with a woman, she's in the picture. Even my son's mom, she was on my early (album) covers.
-- Ice T

#Mom #Son #Albums

Diet food is for lazy people.
-- Ice T

#Lazy People #People #Lazy

I have to take what I say and make it heavy, so every single bar means something. And there's no riddles in my rhymes. Every single word means something.
-- Ice T

#Mean #Bars #Heavy

You have the core hip-hop, which would just be beats and breaks, more something like what you hear with DJ Premier. Then you get into the more highly produced hip-hop, which is something like what DJ Khaled does. But at some point, it starts to get kind of pop.
-- Ice T

#Hip Hop #Doe #Hips

Hip-hop is the fountain of youth. You just don't grow up if you were there. My son's 20. I'm on the same channel he's on. We wear the same clothes, we feel the same thing. It's a weird, weird generation we're in right now.
-- Ice T

#Growing Up #Son #Clothes

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

#Trying #Oppression

The rock'n'roll lifestyle really is available to anybody that's got money. Honestly. Once you get money, if you interview a hundred people with money, they'll all sound like rock stars.
-- Ice T

#Stars #Rocks #People

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

#Fruit #Lowest

The trick with hip-hop-hip-hop is a sport. The only music that's really, really close to a sport. It starts off, "My DJ's better than yours. I can out-rap you, I can out-dance you, my graffiti piece is better than you." It's very competitive.
-- Ice T

#Sports #Rap #Hip Hop

I've never been competitive with anybody but myself.
-- Ice T

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

#Artist #Fire #Creative

Everyone who raps isn't hip-hop. To be hip-hop, you've got to know the culture. You got to know the history.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Hip Hop #Culture

It's not about being mad at everything. It's about being really mad at the right things.
-- Ice T

#Mad #Being Real #Right Thing

I don't feel that rap has been respected as an art form. Because people have seen rappers rap off the top of their heads, they don't think it is difficult.
-- Ice T

#Art #Rap #Thinking

I mean rappin' to me is easy, it's something you can do over a week.
-- Ice T

#Mean #Week #Easy

When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.
-- Ice T

#Dream #Rap #Games

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.
-- Ice T

#Thinking #Scary #Serious

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.
-- Ice T

#Party #Rap #Rocks

I've lectured at Stanford, Princeton & Harvard to name a few... I just might be smarter than YOU
-- Ice T

#Names #Might #Harvard

I think men, growing up, you have to go through some form of hardship. You've got to harden the metal.
-- Ice T

#Growing Up #Thinking #Men

The right to bear arms is because it's the last form of defense against tyranny.
-- Ice T

#Bears #Defense #Arms

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

#Gun #People #Needs

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.
-- Ice T

#Writing #Track #Firsts

As an actor, you can do what you want with your role. That's why they hire you; to take the role and make it real.
-- Ice T

#Real #Roles #Actors

If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't sell, I'll go make a movie.
-- Ice T

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.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Cat #Writing

Everything we do helps the new artists in the long run.
-- Ice T

#Running #Artist #Long

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

#Thinking #Hype #Just Being

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

#Ice #Records

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

#Rap #Pace #Records

I have to grow with my audience.
-- Ice T

#Grows #Audience

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.
-- Ice T

#Mean #Trying #Redemption

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

#Rap #Careers #Albums

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

#Ice #Hammers #Shows

I've never read for a movie, I've always been given them.
-- Ice T

#Given

Winners have to absorb losses.
-- Ice T

#Loss #Winning #Losing

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

#Winning #Mad #Being Cool

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.
-- Ice T

#Thinking #Negative #Done

Military is a great place for a jock. That's the first thing they test you, they test you physically. If you can run, if you can do the pushups, it's not as hard a transition. If you can't do that, you're going to have a problem because they're going to really work it out of you or work it into you.
-- Ice T

#Running #Military #Transition

Ice-T in the music has done some outrageous things.
-- Ice T

#Ice #Done

The music led to the acting. But movies aren't something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.
-- Ice T

#Acting #Chosen

I have no hatred for cops. I have hatred for racists and brutal people, but not necessarily the cops. The cops are just doing what they're told to do.
-- Ice T

#People #Hatred #Racist

You have to come in on a professional level to make it, otherwise you just can't get into rap.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Levels

I'm on the front line and I am a rapper.
-- Ice T

#Rapper #Lines

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

#Labels #Records #Dissing

Well, I am very happy that I was able to play a part in bringing music from the streets onto the radio and into modern culture, I worked very hard and always believed in the sounds I was creating.
-- Ice T

#Play #Creating #Sound

If I do a song where I'm angry, when it's time to perform it live I'm not mad, I'm happy. I'm at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That's acting.
-- Ice T

#Song #Mad #Acting

I write rhymes with addition and algebra, mental geometry.
-- Ice T

#Education #Writing #Mathematics

Any New York group can come to L.A. and sell out every show, but an L.A. group who goes to New York might not do the same because the audience hasn't been introduced to the group.
-- Ice T

#New York #Groups #Might

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.
-- Ice T

#Hollywood #Cinema #Stories

I'm a big fan of all styles, even Biggie and Wu-Tang, but I gotta do my thing.
-- Ice T

#Biggie #Style #Fans

That's basically the gangster code. Just be yourself. Just be you, dog. The easiest way to get your card plucked around a gangster is to be a fake. If we feel like you're trying too hard, if you're trying to act like you're from the street, you're in trouble.
-- Ice T

#Being Yourself #Dog #Fake

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
-- Ice T

#School #Doors #Hip Hop

That's one of the first things that comes out of young people's mouths when they're in love. FOREVER. And that's cool, it's all good-until you get old enough to realize what forever is.
-- Ice T

#People #Forever #Mouths

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.
-- Ice T

#Phones #Play #Cities

My mother passed when I was in the third grade, my father when I was in the seventh, and that's when I was shipped to Los Angeles to live with an aunt.
-- Ice T

#Mother #Father #Aunt

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.
-- Ice T

#Parent #House #Black

A lot of the younger kids now can rap, but they're scared of the crowd. Mastery of that stage is an MC. I don't know if you've seen any great MCs on stage but when you do it's like wow, this is more than the words to rhymes.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Kids #Mastery

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

#Hip Hop #Sound #Hips

My father's family came from Virginia and Philadelphia. He wasn't a brother who talked a lot. He was a workingman, a quiet, blue-collar dude.
-- Ice T

#Brother #Father #Philadelphia

Dog's just want to sniff an ***** and eat some food.
-- Ice T

#Dog #Want #Ass

There is no such thing as a normal family so don't trip off it, just deal with it.
-- Ice T

#Normal #Deals

Being happily married, I’m more focused on what I’m doing. Ya know, one of my quotes is ‘love isn’t looking somebody in the eyes; it’s looking out in the same direction.
-- Ice T

#Eye #Love Is #Married

Jay-Z is like a rap-savant, he doesn't have to write the rhymes down, he can create complex raps in his head. I mean he does memorize it, he just doesn't write it down on paper. He doesn't freestyle onto the track, it's all thought out.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Writing #Mean

So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting.
-- Ice T

#Ideas #Perspective #Acting

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

#Powerful #People #Looks

If I'm going to be a jazz player, I need to understand Miles Davis.
-- Ice T

#Player #Needs #Jazz

I'm at a point where I don't have to wait for the income from the record to survive, so I'm in a comfortable zone, but I'll make rap records as long as I feel I have something to rap about.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Long #Hip Hop

I'm competitive in that I would like to outsell my last record.
-- Ice T

#Progress #Records #Lasts

I think that a rap aficionado, the hardcore rap fan, will always go away from pop, in the same way a hardcore jazz fan will never think Kenny G is really a jazz artist. You gotta kind of know there's always going to be that purist who's going to be like if it ain't beats and rhymes, if there ain't a DJ, then that ain't Hip Hop.
-- Ice T

#Rap #Thinking #Artist

Who can protect themselves from betrayal? The day your brother wakes up and plans to do you dirty, there's no defense against that.
-- Ice T

#Brother #Betrayal #Dirty

Oh man, nobody is as tough as Mr T. Ice T is pretty tough though as well.
-- Ice T

#Hockey #Men #Ice